Darkling
by LynniePearl
Summary: Years after he vanished from his father's funeral, a tragic accident brings Chuck home. But Jack's death isn't all it seems,& when Chuck finds out the accident that claimed his uncle nearly claimed the woman who once haunted his dreams... all bets are off
1. Prologue

_**A/N - Ok. So. Here is the deal. I've had this brewing in my head for a while, since before they introduced Jack on the show. And thus, the plot will follow what *I* already have planned, not necessarily what happened/played out on the show. SOME of the storylines converges, others do not. Jack dies, yes. But he will still play a pretty prominent role in Chuck and Blair's interactions. So, if you absolutely can not stand that idea, this may not be for you. IT'S DARK. You've been warned. And yes, I know. I suck. Starting something else before I finished up TTE. Which I WILL do, I promise. White Lace is done. Maho will be sporadic. This is super short, just a prologue; it didn't fit with chapter 1 (which is almost done.) Take a look and let me know what you think. :)**_

_**Thank you: Catheryne (Nes) who pushed me to persue this, and Ayr, who inspired me to go there. And to Wifey, Court, who inspired the title.**_

darlking: Occurring or enacted in the dark.  


* * *

_"This changes nothing."_

_But that was a lie._

_It changed everything._

_"It changes everything."_

_She hated him. Hated his words. Hated the tips of his expensive leather shoes and the gray that was just beginning to weave itself amongst the charcoal at his temples._

_She should tell him that he was beginning to look just like his brother had at his age, but he'd only split her lip again, and she was tired of explaining to faceless ER nurses why she'd rather chew on her own flesh rather than her food._

_They never believed her anyway._

_"Don't act like you didn't ask for it. This is what you wanted." His hand moved to her thigh and she was glad for the years of shoving her fingers down her throat; they had desensitized her gag reflex. The dress he'd forced her to wear was two sizes two small, but it was intricate in its simplicity and she'd hate for her stomach bile to ruin it – despite its buyer._

_She should tell him to take his hand off of her but she wouldn't. Because he was right. She had asked for this. This was what she wanted. To feel._

_Even if it was pain._

_"Not here," she told him and his eyes darkened as he grabbed her hand and dragged her from the crowded ballroom. She shook her head quickly and the movement belied her authoritative tone, "Not there either."_

_"Not here," he palmed her breast forcefully, making the beaded bodice of her dress grate the bare skin he wouldn't let her shield with undergarments and she was glad for the dark cover of the cool night he'd yanked her into. He'd only get aroused more than he already was if he'd seen her flinch in pain._

_But darkness didn't muffle sound, and he heard her sharp intake of breath as he ripped the hem of her gown until cool air chilled the apex of her thighs. "Not there," he added, his eyes trained on her exposed curls. And though she knew he couldn't see her clearly through the pitch black surrounding them in the alley outside The Palace, the urge to cover herself was nearly too strong to resist. So instead she told him something she knew would stoke the flames of his desire, his obsession for her._

_"The limo."_

_His eyes nearly rolled back into his head and his hand clamped around hers in a vice grip as he tugged her, with her dress open to the waist and the bodice twisted, toward the idling monster._

_From the dark into the light only to be swallowed into darkness once more._

* * *

Lynne


	2. Part 1

_**A/N Same old song and dance. I take no responsibility for any nightmares, nausea, or urges to run me throw with a broad sword this incurs. I'm getting my dirty on. You've been warned. HUGE thank you to everyone who reviewed, I'm encouraged by the response. :) [It's short, again, but I think of it more as prologue part two, than part one, really.]  
**_

_**Special THANK YOU to my little Mia, MPGirl and to my Nes for setting me straight when I'd fallen astray with this one.**_

_**Special dedication: You know who you are. :)  
**_

* * *

"Can't you do that on the plane? We're going to be late."

The question floated through the doorway of his office before she did, a sleeping child resting his dark head against her bony shoulder. He didn't offer the boy a second glance.

"I'd prefer to have it finished now," he said.

She didn't arch her brow at his chaste tone or lack of greeting. It was his way, she'd convinced herself of that the day she'd stepped into the not-quite-white gown and raced down the aisle before he could change his mind. "You've never been worried about tact before." She should know.

He catch her slight undertone of annoyance has he raised his head to look at her. And ignored it. "Tact and respect are two very different things, _wife_."

The word sounded vile on his tongue, laced with poison and barely hidden regret. So she cut him where she knew he'd bleed most. "You have neither. If your father were still alive, he'd tell you so himself. And now even his brother is dead and gone." The child was shifted in her arms as he whimpered, defending his father in his sleep. "Get his things; you'll finish on the plane."

The pen he held in his hand was set a top his large desk as relaxed against the high back of his leather chair. "You're in an awful hurry to burry a man whose death you should fear."

She froze with her back to him; the tufts of dark hair peeking out at him over her right shoulder forcing his gaze to lock just over her left. Her spine stiffened and she threw a glare over her son's head, knowing full well his father wouldn't back down from the challenge despite chancing a glance at his offspring. "You wouldn't dare." The words were said with a confidence he knew she didn't quite feel. Not anymore. Not after his Uncle's untimely death. But he'd never been one to waste his breath on her.

Their son stirred against his mother's shoulder and if her hair, that had always been more red than brown, were the same length it had been when they'd been naïve children, it would have suffocated him. But it didn't because she'd cut it, scissors held in hands shaky from withdrawal, the moment she'd found out she was pregnant.

Or so Jack had told him, hand gripping his nephew's arm at the foot of the metal bird that bore their name.

His name now, he realized.

No. Theirs, he corrected. She's a Bass too, and had been since the ink was barely dry. The boy – it's not what your supposed to call to your son, not what the child (and that was even better, he supposed) deserved, but he couldn't bring himself to call him '_son_'. A fact she knew well.

"Your _son_…" And used, "…and I will be waiting for you on the plane, Charles." She never called him anything else. And he knew why. But didn't care. That life was gone now, disappeared the moment the child blanketed in the darkness of dreams in her arms had been conceived.

That wasn't quite accurate, but the moment of clarity between amber liquid and white powder when the information had tumbled from his uncle's mouth had only been formality; he'd locked himself in the hell of his own making years ago. It had merely taken seven of them to coral him into the cell and throw away the key.

He was tempted to tell her that Jack was dead, and she could damn well wait until _Charles_ had finished the man's eulogy to board their private plane, but he'd penned many a last minute speeches from the belly of the bird, her proposal – if you could call the words he'd badly slurred through his drunken stupor – being his best.

And worst.

And she knew it.

"_Daddy_ will bring you to _Nana's_ once were in New York, J.J," she told her sleeping son's hair as she sashayed down the hall in a dress that clung too tightly and concealed too little for a woman who'd born him a child. They were twenty three now, and lingerie wasn't meant for prying eyes. And he'd long sworn off barely there lacy garments.

He didn't care to analyze it.

But she stalled halfway down the hall, refusing to let Freud be neatly pushed to the back of his mind, to throw one last barb over her skinny shoulder and their… male child's (it's as close to '_son_' as he'll ever get) head. "In and out, Charles," her words were laced with words unsaid, but they spat in his ear regardless. _You should be good at that._ "No detours," she ordered with more authority then she possessed and they both knew he caught her meaning.

No other women, specifically, not _that_ woman.

But he's locked behind bars in this hell of his own making and though his Uncle is dead and gone; leaving behind the key to his freedom, mother and child have taken up the cause, and conjugal visits are not allowed.

Not when the warden is Georgina Bass.

* * *

_A/N I had a lot of issues with tense with this mother. I stopped half way through writing it to finish White Lace (which is mainly written in the present tense) so not only am I going to warn you that any mistakes are embarrassingly my own, but I am going to unabashedly pimp White Lace, since it gave me such a head ache. Go read it, if you haven't. :)_

_Lynne_


	3. Part 2

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Less than nothing. Unless you count my obsession. Then I am a rich, rich woman.**_

_**A/N- I realize that Chuck seems like an ass. At current point, he could be considered one by some, yes. But there is a reason, sordid tale if you will, behind it all. Stick with me and you'll see. But be warned, it will be a rocky ride, and you may just need a strong gag reflex to weather it. :) HUGE thank you to everyone letting me know their thoughts. It's extremely encouraging. :)**_

**_Nes, Ayr, Wifey: Thank you lovely ladies. And to D! xoxo  
_**

**_Dedication: You know who you are._**

* * *

Death. For a boy of four it had been nearly incomprehensible. Heaven and Hell and where was Granny, Daddy? She liked parties, too. Not something his father had excelled in reconciling. But for a man of twenty three; motherless, fatherless and now devoid of all genetic relations – save for his heir, he remembered – it was a comfort, an old friend. A sip of scotch on a cold winter day.

This cold winter day.

"Are you _drinking_? Now. At your uncle's funeral. Really, Charles. Tact and respect indeed." But He wasn't. A sip of scotch 'drinking' did not make. Though that didn't stop his lovely bride from hissing the accusation at him as they watched his uncle's corpse – or what was left of it, he supposed – being lowered into the ground. Her tone was ice, but fire danced behind her eyes; revealing she was all too aware her words had carried across the frigid cemetery, stinging ears bitten by a Jack of a different name.

Eyes flitted through gloom discretely, Manhattan Royalty would never outright stare; they found it difficult to look down their noses while directly at you, he'd discovered, and landed on his fingers as he nestled the silver flask back into his dark coat's breast pocket. Some held grief, some sorrow. The woman who liked to play the role of his mother even had mustered up a few tears for the man she'd only been related to briefly. And had cared for even briefer still. But most, he found, held pity. And it would have disturbed his eighteen year-old counter part, the fleeting glances at the liquor they knew – and expected, no doubt – to be pressed against his heart and at the woman who stood stoically by his side, to know it was aimed in his direction, but Chuck had long since been slain at the hands of Charles.

And Charles didn't care.

"And bringing a five year-old child to a funeral in the dead of winter is considered appropriate, _love_?" He saw the moment she registered the endearment that, between them, was anything but endearing. The flames grew until he half expected them to burn him, green eyes shooting daggers only he could decipher as such from under the wide brim of her hat.

"Your _son's_ tired," she said by way of an answer as she lifted the sleeping child from her chest until Chuck had no choice but to take him from her. Pitying glances washed over him as he held the boy awkwardly against his chest, the silver rectangle between the boy and Chuck's heart digging into his breast. He waited briefly to see if the feeling that his former step-mother and countless experts had told him would bloom the moment father held offspring, but the bud remained shriveled and dry, much like the red roses his wife had placed upon his uncle's wooden casket. He wasn't surprised when it never came.

There had been a time once when it would have, he supposed. During those few months when he'd attempted to embody all that his own father would not.

Or perhaps it was 'could' not; his own experiences with the boy born from his loins hadn't shed any light on that matter. He'd long ago stopped expecting them to.

His eighteen year-old self had been heartbroken that first time it hadn't, he guessed. The hollow ache in his chest had threatened to engulf him completely. But the twenty three year-old man had long since dulled the pain.

He didn't dwell on why it had been there in the first place. Fantasies past were just that – fanciful and _past_.

The eyes were still on him as Jack's corpse was lowered into the frozen ground. Normally the deceased were stored until spring, until the grey of winter conceded to spring's light warmth and the ground was once more soft enough to digest the bones of the dead, but Mrs. Bass had insisted that the family had had enough tragedy and demanded he move heaven and earth to have his uncle buried immediately.

The move would have been shockingly compassionate of her, had Chuck not known of her propensity to wound him where it hurt most; his wallet.

If he were a fanciful man, still longing for the light he'd imagined at eighteen; a trio of brunettes instead of the rusty haired pair that blackened his mood and what was left of his heart, he would have been saddened by the small turnout to wish his uncle farewell. But he wasn't. And as it was, with his child limp and awkwardly blanketed in his father's coat, the silver flask no longer between the boy and Chuck's heart, but the obstacle remaining none-the-less, he was mildly surprised the torch wielding villagers had not yet arrived. Jack Bass had been a determined man, a cut throat sort of business man, and an all around bastard. But as Chuck had despised him for his guidance and insistent opinions – right as they may have been, Charles had respected his unmatched and uncaring tenacity.

Mrs. Bass cleared her throat quietly from beside him, and in a move he knew was more for her ever present and imagined public, wiped a fat tear from her eye. Gloved hand lingered for dramatic effect and had the added benefit of further shielding her eyes from the mourners that mainly consisted of no-longer-step relatives that Georgina had been acquainted with for years, but that Mrs. Bass had never met. Her hand remained poised. He shifted her son slightly to raise his hand in the gesture she was demanding and pat absently at her bony shoulder.

Why she insisted on playing at perfect in the city that had been shrouded in darkness for them both since before they were adults when her shrieking voice echoed in the halls of their perfectly decorated white castle, could only be put down to her torturous nature. He would have applauded, had it ever had the affect she desired.

Pitying glances turned as warm as possible in the mid-December cold and Chuck supposed they did look the part of grieving little family.

With him at the helm once more.

He'd heard the whispers as they had entered the church, and knew everyone was waiting for him to implode and self destruct in the very place he had nearly five years ago.

Or burst into flames.

But he'd done neither, despite the man encased in a wooden box, or the car wreck that had put him there, or the day they gathered to mourn him, the day of his father's death.

"Your mother is on her way over," his wife's hand was gone from her eyes now and she was again reaching for her son, but the same seed of hatred that grew in her and that had forced the boy into his arms to begin with had him snaking an arm around her scrawny neck instead and shifting their sleeping offspring onto his opposite hip. He didn't correct his misuse of the title. It was fitting, he thought. From one Mother of the Year candidate to the other.

"Mrs. Bass," the younger Mrs. Bass greeted, one gloved hand reaching out to clasp the elder's. His former step-mother's eyes darted nervously to his face before she summoned the mask he'd seen her put in place on more than one occasion.

"Mrs. Bass," the elder Mrs. Bass returned with a nod. "Charles," she offered, her earlier hesitation leaving behind no trace of it's presence in her blue eyes. "It's good to see you." She surprised herself, he knew, with the sincerity behind the statement. "I was sorry to hear of Jack's passing." That, on other hand, wasn't quite as sincere. And he couldn't blame her.

"Thank you," gloved hand tightened on gloved hand when Chuck didn't respond and he saw the embers of uncertainty reignite in blue eyes. "We were both very upset by his passing," the former Miss Sparks continued.

The elder Mrs. Bass' head bobbed up and down briefly, seeming of its own volition, until she plastered the cracks in her mask once more. "Charles, Eric wishes to speak with you." His former step mother's eyes flashed momentarily with something he couldn't be bothered to place as they slid to the woman at Chuck's side and then back to him. "I apologize for the inopportune timing, but until we received word of your arrival, we'd been unable to track you down."

It wouldn't have been hard if they'd tried.

He ushered his wife into the sanctuary of the looming beast – ordered upon his wife's insistence to out do his sinister chariots of New York past – and settled the still slumbering child on the leather seat between husband and wife. The latter swooped her son into her lap immediately.

Eric cleared his throat uncomfortably from his seat opposite the couple. His eyes studied Chuck intently, asking the question no one had had the bravery to voice. "Still safer than flying," Chuck answered, referring to the limo they were currently riding in despite the history of Bass men falling prey to the dark beast. Eric nodded and Chuck lifted an eyebrow at the manila envelope he pulled from his black briefcase.

"Jack had me draw up a few documents in the even of his death," Eric pulled crème coloured pages from the envelope as he spoke. Chuck felt his bride stiffen almost imperceptibly to his right. He'd never mentioned Jack hiring Eric's firm to handle Bass Industries' legal business, and he'd never asked the man in question if he'd bestowed the knowledge on her himself. Mrs. Bass and Uncle Bass' relations weren't something Chuck bothered to concern himself with. Not after he'd hired Eric to ensure that his heir had received the right Bass moniker. "Everything is willed to Jackson Jack Bartholomew Bass." And despite the father that the boy's name – chosen by his mother, with intentions of angering his father, no doubt – appeared to finger, his paternity had been verified even before birth.

And fell at Chuck's feet.

"J.J gets _everything_?" The excitement in the rusted brunette's voice was unmistakable; her carefully controlled act slipping as she dumped her child in his father's lap to peer at the documents in Eric's hands.

Chuck was tempted to check the child for signs of life, but the doctors had warned them fatigue and prolonged sleep were bound to be a part of the package. Whatever fragment of Chuck that remained, buried deep within Charles, hated his mother vehemently for it.

Eric hesitated just long enough to be pinned with what Chuck (un) affectionately referred to as his wife's executioner glare. "Uh…" The attorney glanced quickly between the couple. Chuck's interest piqued. Normally the blonde man was as composed as any ambulance chaser he had ever had the pleasure of dealing with. His hesitation piqued Chuck's sluggish interest.

"What were the provisions, Eric?" he asked.

The other man cleared his throat in what Chuck was quickly beginning to remember was his nervous tic. "Barring any marriage," Jack had lived and died an eternal play boy, "any offspring," that was more questionable, "or responsibility for his death," a five year old child capable of murder? "Jackson Jack Bartholomew Bass is to inherit everything on his eighteenth birthday."

"He's five." Mrs. Bass' response pierced the air nearly before Eric had finished speaking.

"However," – or perhaps before he had finished – "if my death is ruled to be a suicide," Eric read, "or is found to have been at my nephew's hand," blue eyes flicked quickly to meet brown and green, "then Mrs. Georgina Harriet Bass is to inherit my estate." Mrs. Georgina Harriet Bass gasped.

Normally euthanasia clauses were reserved for insurance companies, but Jack had always despised the weak. And his nephew, apparently. But the nephew in question – the boy was technically a nephew too, he realized – hadn't had a finger in his uncle's murder. Let alone a whole hand.

"Appears to be straight forward enough. What's the problem?" Chuck asked as Eric cleared his throat for the third time in less than ten minutes.

"There appears to be an investigation into Uncle Jack's death."

'Uncle' Jack had died for Eric the moment Chuck's father had, but Chuck didn't think to comment on the statement. Mr. van der Woodson, attorney at law, was clearly affected by the situation at hand.

Mrs. Bass reached once more for her son, but his father shifted him to the empty seat to his left instead. Perhaps it was the gold digger holding her golden ticket that had him uncharacteristically possessive, perhaps it was merely that same seed they both shared taking root in the pit of his belly.

"They police think Chuck had something to do with Jack's death?" The hope in her words was barely discernible, but his seasoned ears unmasked it without effort.

Eric cleared his throat again and swallowed with difficulty before answering; "It's absurd. Utterly ridiculous." Papers were shuffled once more as the attorney searched for something within the yellow envelope. "But there appears to be a transaction of questionable nature that happened on the night of Jack's death." The statement was said without eye contact and the only true remaining Bass – save for the boy, yes– felt eighteen year-old Chuck struggle within his dark cave, flickering slowly to life before Charles snuffed him out once more. He urged Eric to continue with a slow roll of his wrist. "There was a transfer of funds from one of Mr. Charles Bartholomew Bass' business accounts to... well, the limo's other passenger." Chuck started at that. He hadn't been aware there had been anyone other than his uncle traveling in the vehicle that night. There hadn't been any mention of another casualty in any newspaper he'd read. English or American. His bride, having forgotten all desire to hold her golden ticket in her scrawny hands, leaned forward on the seat beside him.

"Just spit it out, Blondie," She snapped.

Eric chewed on his bottom lip briefly before clearing his throat for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, "I'm sure it's a mistake."

Inheritance candidate number one stirred briefly against Chuck's side as candidate number two snatched the content's of Eric's hands from him as she growled; "We'll be the judge of that."

"The passenger was badly injured, she may never walk again. I'm sure if she'd been paid to orchestrate the accident, she wouldn't have been _in_ the accident." The words rushed from Eric's mouth in one breath and Chuck sent him a mildly curious look before his eyes settled on the bank transaction clutched in his wife's bony hands. It looked to be his account, and the money – the entire contents of the account, no less – appeared to have been transferred to an account at another bank.

Chuck glanced at Eric. "Whose account am I supposed to have padded to off Jack?" he asked.

Eric closed his eyes briefly, no doubt praying to whatever higher power would listen in an attempt to ease the tension Chuck could see that the younger men held in his shoulders. Husband and wife awaited, curiosity ebbing from the former while anticipation rolled off the latter in waves. "Blair Waldorf."

* * *

A/N I think the tense issue is fixed. I just wanted to let you know I will most likely not be updating until thursday/friday. And I apologize for neglecting TTE, I'm opening the file as we speak. :)

xoxo

Lynne


	4. Part 3

_**Disclaimer**: I own nothing. I also do not take responsibility for any urges to hunt me down and shove smelly socks in my face that this incites in any of you. ;)  
_

_**A/N - **HUGE thank you to everyone willing to weather the bumpy ride with this one and to everyone leaving me your thoughts. You guys are amazing and quite perceptive ;).It's on the shorter side again, but I wanted to get this up before I went M.I.A for the weekend (I'm moving. Wish me luck. :( I'll need it.) So if it seems to cut off abruptly, that's why. Please let me know what y'all think. _

_**Special thank yous:** Nes, Ayr, Wifey. _

* * *

If his former step brother's revelation had shocked him as much as it had the woman who he'd wed in what his uncle had loudly referred to as a 'shot gun' wedding, Chuck would have regretted its setting. But as it was his breath stayed in his lungs and the walls of the limo stood firmly in place. His bride, on the other hand, didn't appear to be as unaffected.

"What did you say?" Her tongue flung acid towards the blonde attorney – though if he was to be precise, and _Charles_ was nothing if not precise, then Eric, at nearly twenty-two and in his second year of law school, was more errand boy than attorney. His former step-brother flinched despite his as of yet unattained title.

"Miss Waldorf, ma'am." Chuck had never heard the frightened younger man refer a woman merely two years his senior as 'ma'am' before. Particularly not the glorified errand boy had known since preparatory school. He found it somewhat amusing. Though his bride, jowls tight and nostrils flaring, obviously did not.

"Listen you little-"

He was tempted to let her tongue burn the already fragile bridge that spanned the wide gap between former step siblings, but oddly enough, he found his hand reaching up to awkwardly link his fingers with the bonny ones jesting threateningly beneath Eric's nose.

"_Darling,_ you've had a shock." In all reality they both should have, but Chuck had been rendered speechless by his step-brother's revelation and Charles had the microphone. "Would you like some water?" Mrs. Georgina Harriett Bass glared at her husband, seeing the seemingly caring gesture for what it was. A ploy to otherwise occupy her mouth.

"No thank you, _sweetie_." No matter how many times he heard her spit the word, images of patent black leather and stretchy red headbands rose unbidden to his mind. Something his drunken tongue had whispered into his new wife's ear years ago. And she'd never forgotten. "I'll be fine as soon as your dear brother…" cold green eyes faked sincerity as they flitted to meet blue, "_elaborates_."

The dear brother in question gulped, looking as if he wished their sinister chariot would succumb to the same fate as Bass limos past. "Blair was the other passenger." The words leaped from Eric's mouth before he cleared his throat nervously. At the return of Mrs. Bass' executioner glare, his eyes slide to Chuck's silently pleading for help. Chuck remained silent. "The money was wired from your husband's account to Blair's." The informality offered to Mrs. Bass did not go unnoticed against the familiarity with which the blonde man spoke the second name, and scrawny shoulders squared defiantly to Chuck's right.

"Yes," Chuck was mildly amused by her clipped tone, "I realize that."

J.J. stirred briefly against the black leather to Chuck's left, and a fleeting thought to comfort the boy popped briefly into his head. But his fingers were still held in his bride's a vice grip, and he wasn't one for hollow gestures, anyway.

"What I'm having trouble with," her pause was meant to be reassuring, Chuck knew, though it had more in common with a coiled snake than a teddy bear "is why the police _actually_ think _Charles_ had anything to do with Jack's death?" Yes, _Charles_ was slightly interested in that fact as well. The glorified errand boy's throat worked furiously as he swallowed nervously.

"Uh…." Blue eyes flitted between all three Basses. "I'm not exactly at liberty to tell you, ma'am."

"Well that isn't very helpful, now is it?" No, not quite, Chuck supposed. But husband knew that wife would qualify the hanging of her husband for his uncle's murder as 'helpful'. "What exactly _are_ you at liberty to tell us, _dear_ Eric?" The endearment was meant to strangle the blonde man with intimidation, Chuck knew. His wife; piercing eyes of green ice, scrawny arms, pointed nose and tight lips, could intimidate Satan himself, had Chuck not dwelt in Hell so long its proprietor had come to be intimately familiar with the former Miss Sparks.

His former step brother's rumpled tie was adjusted and his broad shoulders squared defiantly. "I have told you all I can tell you, ma'am." Which wasn't very much, Chuck realized. The man he had been at eighteen; selfish, reckless and more than a little naive, would have bribed, manipulated, or down right schmoozed the information from his step-brother, but the man he was now, apathetic and uninterested, wasn't curious enough to waste his breath on questioning his former relation. Or on Blair Waldorf. The matter would be resolved one way or the other; tangible bars replacing the incorporeal steel that imprisoned him currently, or by way of yet another legally binding contract shackling him to mother and child. The effort to force his lips to form the words wasn't justified by their end result, he knew. Though the flared nostrils and wide eyes of one G.H.B - the irony never ceased to draw a minuscule smirk from his lips – appeared to indicate she thought otherwise.

"So you're telling us that the New York Police Department actually believes my husband capable of murder?" The question wasn't exactly posed with as much incredulity as it should have been if wife believed husband to be incapable of the deed herself. "Because a woman he knew in passing a lifetime ago happened to be _acquainted _with his uncle?" Chuck's stomach rebelled slightly at the way harshly painted lips accentuated the word, though he wasn't at all sure why. The blonde man nodded. Chuck didn't comment. "There must be some mistake." But there wasn't, Chuck knew. He'd been informed of enough gossip by well meaning secretaries, caught enough snippets of American based news programs, and had been part of enough inebriated conversations with Jack over the years to know just who would be heading the investigation into his uncles death.

And Nathaniel, though he hadn't seen hide nor hair of his once best friend in nearly six years, would not have sent a law student in one of his officer's steads to fetch his number one suspect for questioning if he was nothing if not 100 % sure of the case – however backward his logic was. The media would splash Bass Industries' figure head's picture across every newspaper and magazine in the world before Lieutenant Archibald had a chance ask him his name for the record if he was seen being led by an uniform into a Police Station. And Chuck had no doubt that that was exactly what was happening and where this conversation was headed.

"Eric," his calm tone filled the dark enclosure between family and former family, soothing the later and unnerving the former, "tell your brother-in-law we'd be more than happy to oblige him in any questions he might have right now, if it's convenient for him." Bonny fingers tightened their vice grip around his.

"Surely that isn't necessary?" The question was directed towards the only fair haired man amongst the trio of adults, but the venom barely hidden beneath its surface was unmistakably reserved for the dark haired man to her left, Chuck knew. "We have J.J with us, _dear_."

A slow smirk spread itself across Chuck's lips. "I'm sure Nathaniel's wife wouldn't mind having a visit with her God son – funny how he could associate his former step-sister with the word, but was as of yet unable to do so with himself. _Love._"

The light seemed to dawn too late in her eyes and her opportunity to threaten to foist their offspring upon the grandparents her husband despised slipped through her fingers. "Of course, _Charles._ I'm sure dear Serena would love to have a visit with her _nephew._" Eric cleared his throat uncomfortably as her eyes landed on his. "And we must set up a dinner with your brother and mother, as well. It really has been too long. And I have a few things I'd like to discuss with my mother-in-law, since I didn't have the luxury of her advice during my first pregnancy," Eric's eyes widened as her blood red finger nails dragged her husband's hand to impersonate caressing gestures against her nearly concave midsection. "I would be glad to have the opportunity to pick her brain for the second." The not-quite lawyer gawked openly. Chuck freed his nearly numb fingers from his lovely bride's death grip to cradle his male child uncharacteristically close to his chest, though he hadn't whimpered or called out in his sleep.

"Yes, _love._ After Nathaniel has had a go at us both..." He didn't say the words, though they hung heavily in the air between them. _And his second go at you. _Her jaw cracked loudly as she detected their presence. "...we'll arrange to have dinner at the hotel." If they both weren't behind bars before the night was out, which Eric's flighty movements and constant throat clearing just might indicate, Chuck knew.

* * *

A/N - to my anon. reviewer on TTE, sweetie, I'm not forcing you to read it! If it plays like a bad action flick in your head, don't torture yourself. :)

I'll update when I can, probably Monday/Tuesday. :)

Lynne


	5. Part 4

_**Disclaimer: **I own nothing. This is dark, and far from fluffy. You have been warned.  
_

_**A/N-** Thank you to Nes, Wifey, and Ayr. Much love. And to everyone taking the time to politely threaten to keep reading if I've paralyzed Blair, or if Georgie is indeed preggers. You make me giggle and want to call in sick to work to keep writing. :) A million thank yous. Yes, I'm impatient for BC interaction as well, but the back story had to be fleshed out a little to fully understand exactly the weight of everything that's happened between them. :) Thanks for being as excited as I, and impatient as I, for BC!  
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_**Dedication:** You know who you are. S_

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_  
Nathaniel's office was larger than his and Chuck thought it ironic that the money his former step-mother had inherited upon his father's death had more than likely gone into making it that way. Along with bills older than the ages of both men present - and its donor's - combined. Mr. Vanderbilt, having been ashamed and disgraced by his son-in-law the Captain, would not stand for mediocrity to smudge the family moniker any further – regardless of how low brow the position his grandson held was to begin with. Nathaniel Fitzwilliam Archibald could do no wrong in the eyes of his aging grandfather. Not since he'd snagged himself a golden girl by way of a golden babe to round out the family image. Though Chuck knew the old man had never been one to see the forest for the trees where his grandson was concerned, anyway.

"How are the wife and kids, Nathaniel?" The question seemed to catch his former best friend off guard. The golden boy's eyebrows receded into his hair line and his irises expanded, black circles nearly engulfing crystal blue completely. Nathaniel's throat worked noticeably as he swallowed. A trait that he must have unknowingly pilfered from his now brother-in-law, Chuck supposed.

"Fine, thank you." Confusion clung to the words and would have eased the tension in Chuck's shoulders at being before his old friend in a police station for questioning in his uncle's death had there been any there to begin with. "Serena's counseling for the hospital these days, Charlie will be five this Sunday and baby Nelia has croupe. Again." He pulled a large file folder from the top drawer of his desk as he spoke, absently rattling off the details of his private life as Chuck was sure he would to any passing acquaintance he hadn't seen in years, though the man's son was named after this particular 'passing acquaintance.' Chuck didn't dwell on who is daughter took her name from. Nathaniel raised his head briefly to make eye contact. "And you?" And Chuck knew that had they been nearly six years younger, badly fashioned joints and over flowing tumblers would have been called for; the golden man's smile didn't shine like the precious metal it should have, and Nathaniel and Charles were on the same page for the first time since either of them could remember.

"That thick file on your desk tells me you already know the answer to that." The quick flash of uncomfortable guilt in the other man's eyes confirmed that he did indeed, but Chuck answered him regardless. "Similar to your 'fine, thank you', I would assume." Nathaniel appeared to contemplate Chuck's answer, flicking discrete glances at the file that lay open on his desk before he gave a small nod of his head.

"It looks that way," The blonde's small smile was tight and humorless, "although I'm not looking down the barrel of some serious jail time here. Neither is my wife." The awkward clearing of Lieutenant Archibald's throat belied his authoritative tone and Chuck could nearly hear the thought as it passed through the other man's head. _For the second time. _

"I'm sure this matter will be resolved as it was then." Though _then_ Chuck had hoped that his wife, scarcely finished birthing his offspring and already tangled in what New York's newest beat cop had deemed to be an accidental overdose, would have been convicted of the crime, leaving behind the key to his self made prison. _Now_ Charles knew better than to hope for much of anything where his lovely bride was concerned.

"How did we end up here?" The authoritative mask that Nathaniel was attempting to summon back into place appeared to slip completely as the question leaped from his throat, seemingly of its own volition. And Chuck knew the other man wasn't referring to their current surroundings.

"_Nate, I can't." Chuck paced the length of the small room as he repeated the words into his cell phone._

"_I can't handle Serena and the pregnancy and keep Blair from hurting herself. Come home, Chuck."_

"_I can't." Quick. Forceful. A lie. He could, but he wasn't going to. _

"_You're not even hearing me, man. She's completely falling apart without-"_

"_NO."_

"_Why the hell not?!"_

"_I just..."Because this would destroy her, __**He**__ would destroy her. He'd made his bed and now he'd have to lie in it. "…Can't." _

"_She'll forgive you, you know. For leaving. For whatever else you've done. She always does." And she would, in time, he did know. And he would eventually destroy her for it. "Just come home. She needs you." An awkward pause crackled across the line between past and present. "She loves you." _

_She needed him. She __**loved**__ him. She'd given him something his own father had never been able to. And it was time to repay the favour. It just wasn't going to be her that reaped the benefits. "No."_

_The pause was nearly palpable. "What the fuck happened to you?"_

_His humorless chuckle split their uneasy silence. "Life." _

"_Whatever." Self righteousness. Anger. Both warranted. "If you change your mind she's in room 213."_

_He knew the room. He'd secretly paid through the nose to ensure its privacy. "Nate?"_

"…_What?"_

_He could see the last flicker of hope that he'd fought tooth and nail to snuff out dying in his mind's eye. "I'm not going to change my mind."_

"_Don't bother calling again unless you do." _

_The receiver died in his hands then. Amongst other things._

"By way of life," Chuck answered. "It's what we were entitled to." His words were reminiscent of other times and other places and other people. He caught the barely audible sigh that indicated Nathaniel remembered them well. The other man shook his head sadly.

"If you would have told me ten years ago that I would be sitting here, married with two kids – and to Serena Van der Woodsen no less… well, saying I wouldn't have believed you would be putting it lightly." Yes, Nathaniel Archibald and Charles Bass had finally landed on the same page, indeed. And had he been the man he'd been at eighteen the olive branch that was Nate's admission would have been lit on fire until charred wood and black soot was all that remained. But that time had long since past, and Charles didn't care to waste the effort it would require.

It was the first time in years Chuck was glad for Charles.

~*~

"This is basically just a formality; the account is in your name, though I know everyone from Jack himself to Georgina had access to it."

Chuck nodded absently. He'd only been mildly surprised when Nate had expressed interest in his wife's personal affairs. Yes, he knew she enjoyed her alcohol. And drugs – legal as well as otherwise. Yes, he knew she'd had other sexual partners over the years. No, he didn't have any proof. Truthfully, he hadn't cared enough to track any down. Yes, he knew his uncle was involved with his wife. Yes, their relationship had started before Chuck himself had scratched his seven year itch. Yes, he was sure Jackson Jack Bartholomew Bass was his…child. Yes, the fetus she was currently carrying was also Chuck's.

He hadn't bothered with a DNA test this time; he already had one heir who'd only ever received his name from his father – would only ever receive his name from his father, Jack had seen to that. And he saw no point in splitting hairs over paternity with the second; the damage had already been done with the first. This child – regardless of ownership – was merely icing on the cake.

No, they had never been legally separated. No, she had no reason that Chuck was aware of to want Jack dead. If anything, his own death would do her more good than his uncle's would. No, he'd never been unfaithful. No, there was no proof that showed otherwise.

Chuck shifted uncomfortably in the hard wooden chair as he heard the familiar high pitched cry from somewhere down the hall. It was getting late, the sun had already sunk low in the dreary sky, and J.J. had had a long day. Nor had he ever met the woman his mother had named his God mother and in whose care he'd been dumped for more than three hours, though Chuck had never thought to give it a second thought until he'd been reminded of his offspring's presence just now.

Nate closed the large file on his desk. "I was sorry to hear about J.J." Chuck nodded absently as his wife's son's cries pierced his ear drums. A strange feeling closely resembling empathy, Chuck supposed, knocked on his hollow chest.

"_You lying little bitch!" _

"_Watch your tongue around the baby. __**Daddy**__."_

_He glared at his wife as she bent to scoop their screaming offspring from his crib. "I told you if you touched one sip of alcohol… So help me God, Georgina!" Her green eyes, glassy even now as she attempted to deny his accusations, faked surprise. "Play princess all you want, __**love**__, but did you really think they wouldn't tell me? I'm his… He's my…" He waved the paper he held in his hand, taking a threatening step forward into the room, and she turned to face him with their child in her arms, stopping him dead in his tracks. "Fetal Alcohol Syndrom?! That's it Georgina! I'm done!"_

"_No, you're not." A shiver of dread tripped down his spine at her calm, self assured tone. "Take a closer look at the pre-nup, Charles. Jack made sure it's air tight. The only grounds for divorce are infidelity. And since I'm not the one screaming another woman's name in my sleep, and Jackson's the spitting image of his father, you're far from done." Her eyes slipped to the frantic child in her scrawny arms, "And Uncle Jack controls the company now, doesn't he Jackson?" She bounced the terrified bundle against her hip, but the protruding bone there only jarred the infant into further hysterics. "Yea. He does. Which means as long as Uncle Jack is breathing __**Daddy**__ is bound by law to smile pretty for the cameras as the face of Bass Industries - London Branch." Husband was spared a triumphant glare. "You really should learn to read the fine print, Charles. Jack owns you. And since I have Jack right where I want him…" Her gesture was made obscene by the disgusting glint in her eye and the fact that she still held his squawking heir – though to what, he wasn't sure anymore – in her arms. "You're staying."_

"I'd like to meet him." The statement was more question that request, and Chuck found himself agreeing as he rose from his chair; he'd bring his family to the home Nate and his wife shared with their two children for supper instead of the cold meal he'd offered to the elder Mrs. Bass and his former step-brother. "You're not even going to ask about her, are you?" The rickety bridge that had been fashioned from the small olive branch began to sway to and fro. Chuck stilled, his hand on the doorknob, but didn't look back.

"You told me not to." Nearly five years ago, true, but the reasoning still remained. It hadn't changed. He hadn't changed. "I figured she was either unable or unwilling to answer your questions if you'd sent Eric to fetch me instead."

"Both. Until this morning. Then just unwilling."

Chuck gave a final nod and moved to find his shrieking heir. He didn't point out that his comment had been a statement and not a question.

~*~

"Mrs. Archibald." His greeting was met with an exasperated sigh and an exaggerated flick of her wrist. Once upon a time Chuck had enjoyed putting that annoyed look on his step-sister's face, and Charles was just exhausted enough to let him take the wheel for the split second it took for the grin to spread like lightening across his lips. It was gone just as quickly.

Golden locks swung over his former sibling's shoulder as she passed him her God son. J.J.'s whimpering immediately quieted down as the child, small for his age and nearly as underweight as his mother, nestled himself into his father's broad chest. If said father's hands waited their usual few minutes, anticipating what never came, before they awkwardly patted the small child's back, then Mrs. Archibald pretended not to notice.

"He's beautiful." Her easy and obvious affection for the child should have been enviable, but the man he was at nearly twenty-four had long since watched his ability to envy wither and die. "I hope you said yes to dinner." The sincerity behind her words and the soft touch of her hand on his elbow burned him. He didn't bother to wonder who'd initiated the invite. Details didn't matter; it had been extended and accepted.

"I miss you." There was something in the way she said it that left him with the distinct feeling she didn't just mean him. "I haven't seen her either." And he was right. "Not since the night after her first attempt…" To take her own life. She couldn't bring herself to say it. Unacknowledged equaled non existent. Chuck understood.

"To commit suicide," he offered. Her blue eyes widened in horror, flicking quickly to the small child in his arms, but he'd felt J.J. teeter over the edge into sleep nearly the second he'd burrowed himself into his father's neck. And he wouldn't have understood the words even if he wasn't blanketed in sleep's darkness, Chuck knew.

Silence stretched between former siblings.

"Yes." The admission was hard for her, he realized, but he didn't detect any of the same bitterness her husband had spat across the Atlantic nearly five years ago. He tried to convince himself he wouldn't care if he did.

"Nathaniel said she's been released?" He wasn't sure why he asked the question. And judging by her suddenly stiff spine and guarded expression, neither was the current Mrs. Nathaniel Archibald. She bit down on her full bottom lip and nodded.

"That's what he said, yes." A convoluted answer at best. That the former wild child was apparently not going to elaborate on. "Look, Chuck…" Or perhaps she was. He absently readjusted his sleeping offspring as she continued, "Nate thinks if you talk to her she'll tell you what she was doing with Jack. Why she was in his limo when the accident happened. Why she was even in the limo at all." The telltale signs of doubt etched into the tired lines around her eyes told Chuck his former step-sister wasn't as sure as her husband appeared to be. "All this is Georige. I know it is. If you could get Blair to just talk to you, it would rule her out as a suspect. I know it would." Why the woman whose ties to the New York socialite in question were stronger and further reaching than his own thought he was the key to prying the information from Miss Waldorf, Charles was neither curious nor willing to find out. And that part of him that would have been, that part of him that would have scaled mountains, swam oceans, and grown wings just to protect all that was Blair Waldorf, was buried deep down where light never ventured in the hollow pit that Charles called a heart.

And yet he found himself responding with a hint of regret, "I can't, I'm sorry." He'd told her husband the same thing with nearly the identical words when they'd both been but children awaiting the birth of their children.

That was where the regret had escaped: from the past. From Chuck. It wasn't flowing through Charles' veins presently. This place and these people and the length of the day were eating away at his sanity. Making him indulge in hollow gestures; comforting his son and asking after women who didn't matter anymore, making him want to ease the worry creeping into the eyes of people he didn't know anymore. Who didn't know him anymore.

"You can. You just won't." She was right. He hadn't been precise, he should have been precise. He was normally nothing if not precise.

"I can," he agreed. "I just won't." The ends didn't justify the means. The information was of no value to him. He didn't need to know why a girl he'd known in passing lifetimes ago had been riding in his Uncle's hearse. What had almost been hers, too. It didn't matter. He had no need for the information. Putting forth the effort to obtain it was useless. Pointless.

Chuck quirked a brow at his former sibling as she reached to gather his male child into her capable arms, but didn't resist as he had done nearly four hours ago when it had been his wife's bonny fingers trying to latch onto her golden ticket. He didn't analyze why.

"You can play heartless bastard all you want, Chuck. But you're family and I'm not letting any brother of mine – heartless or otherwise– stay in some hotel when I have a perfectly good guest wing collecting dust." Chuck half arched an eyebrow at her use of the singular, but she continued. Having either missed the action or taken a page from his book and ignoring it. "Besides, they're holding Georgie the full seventy-two hours and this little guy and I could use the uninterrupted catch up time." Her slender fingers weaved themselves between the thick, dark locks on J.J's head as she spoke, their movements effortless. Not contrived like they would have been had the pale fingers in the boy's hair been his mother's. Or forced, Chuck thought, had the fingers been his own. Though he'd be hard pressed to remember a time when they had been. If they ever had been.

"You own half that hotel, Mrs. Archibald. If I'm not mistaken." He wasn't. But he didn't protest as she led him past reception into the moonless night. Or when she tucked his exhausted offspring into the back of her white Range Rover and turned the sleek vehicle towards her sprawling Manhattan home.

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A/N - If I haven't gotten back to your reply, I'm working on it. :) The move went well, thank you to those who asked! :)

And, Anon, sweetie, I wasn't being purposely rude before with my previous response to you. I reply to all reviews, or at least to those that have been singed, and I merely wanted to let you know that you didn't have to force yourself to read something that you weren't enjoying! I agree, constructive criticism is extremely helpful, and I value it highly. I'd much rather have a private conversation with you about the rest of your review, so if you feel so inclined hit me up with an email. (I'm enabling this feature on my profile) If not: No, your review wasn't a critical assessment of the story's merits or faults, but it was your opinion and I value it as such. And I didn't take it to be a flame, or advice, but for what it was: your opinion. If you feel like I have insulted you or have been rude to you, I apologize; however, I don't feel I was.

I would never begrudge - and have on more than one occasion *asked* for - critical assessments/constructive criticism for any of my pieces. This is, after all, how you improve. Is it not? I thank you for the compliments and wish to ask you to reconsider your statement of refraining from commenting. 1) because I believe you have an honest voice and I think I could benefit from the constructive criticism, and 2) because if something I've said or done were to stop you from expressing your opinion, or suppressed your opinion in any way... well, I'm not sure anyone is worth that much action. Or non action, as the case may be. But, that being said, if you would rather back away from our misunderstanding (as I believe it to be) quietly, then I respect that as well.  
XOXO

Lynne


	6. Part 5

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, for entertainment purposes only._

_**A/N -** Thank you for being patient with me and for being willing to ride this one out. It's dark, but I think you'll find the ending to be fitting. A huge thank you to everyone taking the time to leave me their opinions and reviews. I'm very encouraged and motivated by the response. Please don't hesitate to continue. :).  
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_**Special thank you's**: Ayr, Nes, Wifey.  
_

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Dinner had been awkward. Though the eighteen year-old version of the man currently lacing fresh air with tobacco had thrived on awkward. He'd made a career out of inappropriate comments, lewd remarks and obscene gestures. He'd even gone so far once as to 'accidentally' lead his step-sister into their foyer under the guise of having forgotten his book bag, knowing full well his father and step-mother were currently engaged in activities that should have made his skin crawl just thinking about their advanced ages and drooping anatomy. It hadn't. It had; however, completely scarred his sibling for live. And that alone had had him grinning like the Cheshire cat for two weeks straight.

Dinner had been another form of awkward entirely. One that the soon-to-be twenty four year-old Charles had become accustomed to through the daily dinners he sat down to with his wife and offspring. And, on every second Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, his Uncle Jack (though the sexually based brand of awkward tended to find its way across the pond then, as well). Chuck wasn't sure if it was jet lag or the day that just seemed to grow longer and longer, but instead of the comfort the figure head of Bass Industries normally felt engulfed in awkward silences, he'd had an odd feeling eating away at the pit of his stomach as he watched Mrs. and Mr. Archibald dance around each other at the dinner table.

Nathaniel had been pleasant enough, Chuck supposed. Offering his spouse wine – which she declined; a move that would have had 'inappropriate knocked up comment' written all over it had they'd still been the same people they had been as high school seniors – and pulling her chair out for her whenever she rose to check on the children. And his former step sister had been the perfect hostess, asking after Chuck's business, J.J.'s health, and enquiring about the weather in London this time of year. But for some reason the uneasy undertone that filled the room whenever wife addressed husband directly had Chuck's nerves beginning to feel as though he'd consumed one too many caffeinated beverages. And he didn't find it the least bit comforting.

He'd even gone so far as to fetch J.J. from his room in the guest wing, offering a contrived excuse about a recurring nightmare or missing his mother, Chuck couldn't remember which, just to have a shield between himself and the unhappy couple. Although that plan had been foiled the minute the statuesque blonde that was his former sibling had noticed his offspring's sudden pallor and clammy brow.

J.J. was resting comfortably now, a call having been put into his pediatrician and the only medication in the house that wouldn't damage his already failing kidneys administered, and Chuck had escaped to the west wing balcony to indulge in the habit that he occasionally would succumb to. The last time being the day J.J. was born.

"_Meet your son, Mr. Bass." The doctor that handed him the screaming bundle reminded him, oddly enough, of Nathaniel, Chuck thought. His sandy hair was askew, dark tufts nearly obscuring his almost unnaturally blue eyes. "He's saying hello," the man explained when Chuck held the infant away from his body, wincing at the high pitched screams. _

_And some hello it was. Chuck could barely hear Georgina loudly demanding a cigarette from behind him over the boy's never ending cries. _

"_You need to support his head," she told him once the private medical staff had left the castle. And he was pretty sure she was too high on whatever drugs they'd pumped into her body to know which end was up, let alone to remember that he'd been the one telling her that very same thing not ten minutes ago. Or that he'd been the one going to all her Lamaze classes in her stead. Or that he was the one who'd read all the baby books. _

_He was pretty sure she'd remembered that last one when he'd explained that all babies were born with blue eyes and that their son's would most likely darken over the next few months, although there was the chance that they would stay blue like Chuck's father's – or the man's brother's – because Chuck carried the recessive 'blue gene.' Though her expression had been completely blank and she'd merely demanded another cigarette, content to let Chuck hold the baby while she puffed away on what he'd come to call cancer sticks. But he'd grown uncomfortable with the squirming bundle in his arms when the baby seemed to look right throw him. _

_Shouldn't a baby recognize the sound of his father's voice, Chuck thought. He read that infants could only see well enough to focus eight – fifteen inches away, just enough to make out the face of who was holding them. So he tried holding the tiny child closer to his face and murmuring into his small ears just incase the poor thing was having trouble matching the blurry image to the sound of his voice. It didn't help. He screamed himself until he was hoarse and Chuck was half deaf. Chuck even tried every trick he'd read and every thing Lily had told him that had always worked like a charm to get Eric and Serena to stop screeching. Nothing worked. And when he thrust the sputtering infant back at its mother and the child immediately settled down, he quickly gathered the boy back into his arms. There was no way on earth that Georgina Sparks – Bass now, he remembered belatedly – was more maternal than he was. Gender aside – it just wasn't going to happen. _

_But it did. J.J. squawked and squirmed every time Chuck held him until he put the tiny bundle back into its mother's arms. _

_His own child couldn't stand its father. And Chuck didn't blame him. He didn't have the connection that he could see plain as day written across even Georgina's face as she held the baby. And he didn't experience that knee jerk reaction every book and doctor told him that he would eventually. Fathers took longer to bond with their children, he knew, but the hollowness that engulfed him at the sight of his child's wide, blue eyes, tiny little nose, and chubby fingers didn't point towards there being a light at the end of the tunnel. And after three months of hollow emptiness filling him whenever his own flesh and blood filled his arms, even after J.J. had become accustomed to being held in Chuck's awkward embrace, and even longer still, after the first time J.J. had called him 'Dada', Chuck waited for the warmth to bloom in his chest or the tears of pride to blur his vision. _

_But they never did. _

_And he stopped expecting them to. _

Someone cleared their throat awkwardly behind Chuck. He hadn't heard anyone approaching, or noticed that his cigarette had nearly burnt his fingers without him so much as taking a second puff.

New York was starting to grate on his nerves.

He would be satisfied when this was settled one way or the other and he could board a plane back to England.

"Chuck?" It was Eric, Chuck realized, though he hadn't heard his former step-brother arrive. "I just wanted to let you know that legal representation has been arranged for your wife and they will be meeting with Mrs. Bass first thing tomorrow morning." Chuck nodded absently as he flicked what remained of his cigarette over the balcony. He felt Eric hesitate from behind him. "Can I ask you something?" Chuck didn't bother to point out that that in itself had been a question. He motioned for Eric to continue with a slow roll of his wrist, but didn't turn to face the sandy haired boy.

Silence stretched itself thin between former siblings, and had Chuck's nerves not already been irritated by the city and its people or the day in general, he would have turned to give the other man his attention. But as it was, he was tired and in his former step-sister's home with a sick child when he'd rather be left to his own devices in the comfort of The Palace's impersonal atmosphere. Preferably with a private nurse.

Eric took a deep breath and Chuck felt the flicker of something cool in his belly for a moment longer than Charles normally allowed. "Are you ok?" That was not the question that Chuck had anticipated the other man asking. "I mean… considering we buried Uncle Jack six years to the day that Bart died."

"_Chuck!" He felt his uncle's grip tighten around his elbow before he could ascend the first metal step towards the looming plane. "What are you doing? I said Georgie's pregnant!" Or toward freedom, it seemed. Chuck paused, one hand on the metal staircase that would lead him across the Atlantic, towards home and the people he'd left behind when he'd stormed into the night after his father's funeral; toward Blair, and the other caught in his uncle's vice grip. _

"_Good for her. I'm going home. Blair-"_

"_Isn't important anymore. You've made your bed, and now you have to lie in it." Chuck growled low in his throat, his insides twisting violently at his uncle's words. He should tell him that Blair would always be important. Couldn't ever be anything but important to him, he knew now, but before his sluggish brain, only very recently cleansed of white power and amber liquid, could form the words that his mouth so desperately wanted to spit in Jack's face, the older man was yanking him towards the idling beast whose bowls he'd burst from. Chuck resisted. _

"_The kid's probably not even mine and I wouldn't want it even it was!" he yelled. Jack halted and slowly turned ice blue eyes on his nephew. _

"_That's what your father said about you." _

He hadn't expected anyone to give it more than a passing thought. He himself, who remembered the date in question every year, barely felt the quick pang of loss anymore. "Fine thank you, Eric." And if his voice wasn't as even as it should have been he simply chalked it up to his worn out state.

The feather light touch at his elbow could also be filed under the heading of 'unanticipated', and had him contemplating, not for the first time that evening, excusing himself to the comfort of solitude and the familiar feeling of amber filled crystal ware in his hand.

"It's ok, you know. All this. If it's too much to handle." It wasn't. It wasn't the activities the day held or the date on the calendar so much as the length of the hours that kept stretching endlessly into the next that had his feathers slightly ruffled. "Nobody will say anything if you need to take a few days." No, they wouldn't. Though they hadn't said anything six years ago when he'd disappeared after his father's funeral, either, flask in hand and red rimmed eyes. Averted gazes and quiet murmurings were much more Manhattan elite's style.

Eric cleared his throat awkwardly and Chuck turned to face him, if only to put an end to the aggravating sound. "It's alright, Eric." He hadn't spoken his former step-brother's name so frequently since before 'former' had been added to the title. And he had neither the want nor the energy to dwell on it now. Nor, he realized as he perceived the expression carved into the other man's face, the time. Former sibling was currently looking at former sibling in a way that gave Chuck the distinct impression the conversation had yet to reach its end. And it didn't look to be nearing its final bow anytime soon. "Was there something else?" The Chuck of nearly six years past would have sighed and lit another cigarette at the hesitant look that flashed in bright blue eyes. As it was, Charles vaguely considered seeking out the flask in his jacket pocket. Though he wouldn't need to consume nearly as much of the amber liquid as he had in the first days of his marriage to snuff out the flicker of frustration dancing in his hollow chest; his body had taken its cues from Tobermory, Talisker, and Teaninich and kept any flammable surface doused in darkness and the sparks that could ignite flames at arm's length. Chuck didn't pause to consider how the faint glow had come to exist now.

"I know you already told Serena no…" And he had. Less than three hours ago, he had. With the same hint of something close to regret he felt edging into his words now.

"That I did."

Apparently finding the perseverance and strength Chuck himself had felt seep from his bones as the day had worn on, the blonde boy continued, "But I would like to ask you to reconsider." He held up a hand to halt the protests that Chuck hadn't bothered to make. "In the interest of efficiency, and with J.J.'s health in mind, hear me out." It should have bothered Chuck, he knew, that the man he'd once considered family, and who was currently engaged in courses meant to endow him with persuasiveness, had placed Chuck's requirement of effort inputted equaling result gained before his offspring's health. "Your wife" – the shroud of disdain and intense dislike surrounding the word (and the woman) was not lost on Chuck – "is being held until Sunday night. And she tells me that J.J. is scheduled to undergo his latest round of dialysis tomorrow evening. Now," the other man slid a hand into the pocket of his slacks as he talked. Chuck was mildly amused that his former step-brother seemed to be addressing him as lawyer would a notoriously stubborn judge. "You can pack up J.J. and return to London for his appointment as planned without Mrs. Bass," lawyer jargon and personal viewpoint converged to have the younger man nearly spitting the title from pursed lips, "in which case J.J. will be forced to undergo the procedure without his mother present, and you will be met with the added hassle of having to arrange for her return to London after she is released."

The not-quite lawyer paused in his address to turn a sympathetic smile in Chuck's direction despite his well known feelings on the subject of Mrs. Georgina Bass and words unspoken dangled in the muted light of the balcony. _If that is the way this plays out._ "Or you can spend an hour with Blair Waldorf and speed this process up, saving everyone, including yourself and your son, the long and drawn out ordeal of a lengthy investigation. You could even be back in London in less than twenty-four hours."

Chuck could have pointed out that Eric's sister seemed to think that his lovely wife was in some way responsible for Jack's death and that Miss. Waldorf held the key that would lock Mrs. Bass behind bars for much longer than seventy-two hours. Or he could have inquired as to why exactly everyone seemed to think that the woman who he'd cut all ties with lifetimes ago would divulge any information to him. Or why Nathaniel had apparently mounted his white horse where Blair Waldorf was concerned despite the fact that he hadn't had contact with her in nearly as long as his wife had. At least up until she ended up in the middle of his investigation.

But he didn't because it didn't matter. Jack had been right all those years ago; she didn't matter. She was merely a means to an end. So regardless of whether his bride had expanded her repertoire to involve murder or whether Miss. Waldorf possessed the information to confirm or dispel the notion, if exploring the possibility stood to hasten Chuck's return to London, and his departure from New York, while simultaneously benefiting J.J. (and it was the least that he owed his offspring, Chuck knew), he supposed the effort was justifiable.

The other man came to a halt in front of Chuck, his hands in his pockets, and rocked back on his heels in a gesture that would have vaguely reminded Chuck of himself before car crashes and occupied uterus's and wedding bands had he not been nearing the point of exhaustion. The latter stifled a yawn that had unknowingly crept up on him as he'd contemplated cost and effect and through drooping eyelids Chuck registered the flash of white as the satisfied smile that indicated his former sibling had perceived his soundless answer spread itself across the other man's lips.

The decision had been made, his verdict rendered, Chuck's could almost hear the faint sound of a gavel hitting solid wood somewhere off in the distance.

Tomorrow he would visit one Blair Cornelia Waldorf.  


* * *

A/N- I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but BC is imminent in the next part. I tried to finagle it into this section, but it did not suit, I apologize. Also, this is probably rife with typos, I'm exhausted and may have made up a few words of my own. LOL.

Lynne


	7. Part 6

_**Disclaimer:** I own NOTHING. _

_**A/N - **I'm sorry this took longer than I intended. My computer decided it was hungry. And then the angst that is this story apparently gave it indigestion and it crashed. SO this is a rewrite. I'm unsure as to how it turned out. Please take a few minutes to let me know. THANK YOU to everyone who has been leaving me their thoughts, very much appreciated. And you are quite the perceptive bunch. :)  
**Thank yous**: Ayr, Nes and Wifey._

* * *

Her building hadn't changed since the last time he'd stood in precisely this spot, he supposed. Though then he'd stood, flask in hand and tear stained cheeks, starring through the pitch black night at the looming grey monster, convincing his feet to move in the opposite direction.

His feet wouldn't falter now, he knew. His former step-brother had argued his case masterfully and Chuck was convinced that the potential merits of the younger man's proposition were worth making his way through the drizzling rain and thick fog for a quick exchanging of facts.

He motioned to the limo driver to keep the sinister beast poised and ready for movement. He had allotted no more than an hour's time to the task at hand; Eric's lawyers would be meeting with his bride to provide counsel for her latest legal entanglement at exactly 9:00 a.m. and Chuck had had enough experience with Mrs. Georgina Bass to recognize the potential for her to further inconvenience him with a false accusation, and he intended to be present at the meeting.

The frigid morning's gnarled fingers tugged at his scarf and clawed at his ears as he made his way into the cement building. Chuck welcomed the familiar grey haze that seemed to have settled on the city since his arrival the day before. Had he been inclined to belief fanciful notions, he might have even marveled at the apparent coincidence of identical weather between London and New York, but he'd long since watched all boyish notions of coincidence and fate and destiny be swallowed whole by the sinkhole that was reality.

He knew now that coincidences were merely the product of inattention, and that fate and destiny were merely intangible constructs invented by mortal beings meant to give comfort and structure in an unstructured and unpredictable world.

The spotless glass doors reflected his appearance as the doorman cleared them from his path. The same black overcoat that he'd worn to his uncle's funeral offered protection from the mid-December biting cold now, and his scarf, the only splash of colour amongst his subdued attire, encircled his neck.

After the soon-to-be lawyer had expertly played his land, the rest of the evening had been uneventful. Former siblings had made their way back into the west wing dinning room to find that the elder of the two current Mrs. Basses had arrived shortly after her son to round out the foursome of blondes. The presence of the fair haired matriarch appeared to smooth the wrinkles in the fabric of his former step-sister's marriage and conversation had flowed relatively easily until Chuck had no longer maintained control over his drooping eyelids and had excused himself for the evening.

He'd been escorted to his bed chamber by a stoutly woman who kept peering over her shoulder at him intently as they made their way down the dark corridor to a lavishly furnished room directly beside his sleeping offspring's. He would have told the woman it was unnecessary for him to be adjacent to the child; oddly enough he'd been able to detect the boy's high pitched screaming from Nathaniel's cement encased office, but his weary feet had carried him into the dimly lit room and the heavy Oak door had been firmly shut behind him before his sluggish lips had been able to form the words. Though he'd been unable to heed sleep's call until he'd forced his lethargic limbs through the adjoining doorway to glimpse the rusted brunette sleeping peacefully next door. And it had unnerved him slightly. The spark of relief that came when he discovered that J.J. hadn't been as hot to the touch as he had been nestled in his father's lap at dinner only fueling the tiny flame, but he'd been too depleted from the day's events to be bothered to snuff out the uncharacteristic flickering. So it had been Chuck and not Charles who'd found his fingers straying to toy with the soft lock of errant hair that had fallen across the child's forehead. Chuck who absently whispered good night into the room's muted light before he'd crossed the threshold back into his own shadowed room, barely making it to the large mattress before he'd finally succumbed to sleep's beckoning calls.

The dreamless sleep had settled his abnormally agitated nerves and he'd woken this morning rested and fully in charge of his faculties.

The elevator doors slid open to reveal an elderly man adorned in a uniform devoid of all colour. Had the date on the calendar been one of nearly six years prior, Chuck's greeting would have been as colourful as the man's uniform was dark, but as it was the building's management's fashion sense was of no concern to him. He merely offered the elderly man a curt nod and his intended floor number. The pump gentleman hesitated briefly, but Chuck did not offer him a second glance, and eventually his chubby fingers pressed the desired button and the car began to move.

The ride was silent. Which suited Chuck perfectly. He saw no reason to waste pleasantries on a man whom he would most likely never re encounter save for on his descending trip. The attendant was not on Bass Industries' pay roll and therefore didn't warrant the figure head's paid for attention, nor did the man have any information to offer Chuck that hadn't already been gathered by the authorities. But the little man persisted in his openly curious perusal, leaving Chuck with the distinct feeling that the building's employees hadn't been permitted to view Miss Waldorf's return home after her release.

"Have you known Miss Waldorf long, son?" A direct question, asked with more familiarity than the plump stranger should be exercising in the presence of a man he'd never met. And with just enough barely hidden curiosity that it confirmed Chuck's idle suspicions. Miss Waldorf had apparently not wished her return to be public. "Son?" Chuck kept his attention focused forward and ignored the word that hung heavy in the hair between them.

While the monster's concrete scales hadn't changed, its elegantly decorated inner workings had been replaced with toned down hues similar to the demur grey that shrouded the beast. Chuck found his attention wandering back to the man cloaked in black to his left.

"Yes," he said. The attendant appeared to contemplate the vague statement that was his answer, but the elevator arrived on the building's top floor before the elderly little man could probe the issue any further. Chuck nodded once more at the round attendant and exited the car as the other man finally found his voice. His words dodged the heavy metal doors as they slid shut, leaving Chuck alone with the warning.

"Don't worry, her back is worse than her bite."

But Chuck was only interested in any information that she possessed that stood to settle this matter one way or the other. Her bark, her bite, and whatever condition his former step-brother had alluded to in the limo and that had her enveloping herself in secrecy were irrelevant. Unless the injuries she'd sustained during the collision had hampered her memory, Charles didn't care. It didn't matter.

There would have been a time when her being injured would have crippled him. Even more so than losing his only living relative (save for his male child, he remembered.) But the nights filled with lust and longing and the infatuation that had first engulfed him at sixteen as he'd watched her hips sway methodically to the tantalizing music - and probably before, if he were to be accurate, and Charles appreciated accuracy - were long gone. They'd faded like a photograph left in the sun; the vivid colours of the people and places blurring until all that remained were the shadowy, indefinable outlines of things past. She was no longer Blair, the center of Chuck's universe and his reason for scheming. She was now only Miss Waldorf, passing acquaintance from a youth so vastly removed from his adulthood that had her picture not been splashed across magazines and newspapers the globe over, he would scarcely be able to remember the exact shade of her eyes.

He'd heard snippets here and there about her life as he'd carried on with his own, and knew enough to realize that the reason the leather soles of his shoes echoed throughout the spacious penthouse was due to the untimely death of her mother and step-father. He'd had his hands full with a newly pregnant wife when he'd heard the news of her father's murder, and the terrorist attack that had claimed the lives of her mother and step-father merely seventy two hours later as they'd been making their way across the Atlantic to mourn his death had had him falling to his knees and thanking whatever deities he could think of for the Parisian fashion week that had required her presence since the week prior to Roman's death. He'd even gone so far as to make it halfway down the castle's secondary staircase, phone in hand, her number half dialed, before he'd heard his new bride's insistent calling. She'd begun to bleed.

And it was then, coat shrugged into haphazardly and blackberry casting a faint light in the dimly lit stairwell, that the reality of his decisions had crashed into him with the force of a thousand hurricanes.

His wife and child. Or Blair Waldorf.

But he'd already made the choice. There was no going back; it had been written in stone by his uncle's hand. His family's hand. And it was family that grew inside the otherwise empty vessel that was the former Miss Georgina Sparks. So jaw set and spine stiff, he'd made his way into his wife's suite to find her paler than he'd seen her look when she'd been barely breathing from the sheer amount of foreign substances speeding through her veins, and firmly pressed end on his cell phone.

Charles had long since ended more than just the half dialed call and he would end this meeting as quickly as she allowed.

The penthouse had also suffered at the hand of whatever decorator had been hired to rejuvenate the elevator, and he found himself being met with harsh angles and the sharp lines of metal furniture as he made his way through the rooms situated on the main level. Eric's ominous declaration only the day before did not lend itself to the notion that he would find her anywhere that required ascending stairs.

And he'd been right. "Is that you?" Her voice sounded muffled from somewhere ahead and to his left. "Archibald told me you were dead." So Nathaniel himself had been to interview Miss Waldorf. Chuck would have found the information interesting at seventeen, but at five months shy of twenty four, Charles didn't care. It was not relevant. "I should have known he was lying. A cretin like you would survive the Apocalypse." He had to agree with her there, he supposed. Jack would have found a way to barter the only shred of a soul he possessed for survival. "Well, you can just turn right around and go back to where you came from. I told you that night that it didn't change anything." Perhaps this meeting would require even less time and effort than the allotted hour, Chuck thought. Her memory appeared to be perfectly intact. His feet slowed on the marble tiles as he approached the open doorway that her muffled words appeared to be floating through. Maybe if he lurked in the shadows long enough she'd let slip whatever information Nathaniel and the rest of the blondes seemed to think she she was hoarding. "It's gone now anyway." A sensation vaguely resembling anticipation gave a hesitant kick in the pit of his stomach. "The accident took care of that." He felt something odd slowly roll over in the vicinity of the empty space where his heart had previously been located. He ignored it. "The Bass seed... Chuck." He'd come to stand in the open doorway without his brain registering it, he realized belatedly. "Get out."

And she would have been pointing the way, he knew, had she been able to. But as it was she was lying deathly still with a thick swatch of cloth nearly as white as her pale skin wrapped securely around her neck. And it was then he realized his former step-brother did not share Charles' affinity for accuracy.

Blair Waldorf may never walk again, yes. But the more precise description of her injuries would have included the fact it was due to her possible inability to do anything unassisted ever again save for blinking.

"GET OUT!" And screaming, it appeared.

Let alone put one foot in front of the other. Ever again.

* * *

_**  
A/N-** I'm tempted to defend Chuck's reaction, but I think it would ruin the effect of this part if I did. Also, if I haven't gotten back to your feedback yet, I'm a button's push away from doing it now. :)_

_Lynne_


	8. Part 7

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing._

_**A/N -** So I finally have internet in the new place. :) Sorry that this took so long! Part 8 is half written and *may* be up tonight. Will more than likely be up by Sat/Sun. Thank you to everyone sticking this through, and to everyone leaving their comments. You don't know just how inspirational/helpful you are. Many thanks.  
Special thanks to : Ayr, Nes, Wifey. xoxo_

* * *

"Leave!"

And he was tempted to do just that. He hadn't been so naive as to think that she'd escaped the wreck that had claimed his uncle's life unscathed; the budding legal mind that was his former step-brother had outlined – though vaguely, it appeared – the extent of her injuries. Neither had Chuck expected any of the fair haired foursome to inform Miss Waldorf of his intended visit. Serena had plainly told him that she hadn't had contact with the brunette still screaming herself hoarse before him since a few months after his abrupt departure. Nearly six years ago. And while Nathaniel had been the one to extend the proverbial olive branch during yesterday's interview, Chuck had detected a slight undertone of resentment mixed with something closely resembling possession when the topic had shifted to the woman in question. It hadn't left him with the impression that his well being had been amongst the golden man's top priorities at the moment. And judging by the smoke he could nearly see billowing angrily from her ears, he'd been correction in his assumptions, it appeared.

He could reverse his steps and leave her where she lay, he supposed, but then effort would surpass result gained.

"Get out!"

The exertion behind her words was evident as she spat them at him furiously. But the room that had obviously been converted to accommodate her injuries was too large for them to traverse successfully, and the syllables fell uselessly at his feet. A silence that should have been awkward considering all that lay between former acquaintances descended upon the white room and Chuck found it oddly fascinating that the rest of the penthouse had been coated in layers of gloom while she lay, limbs numb and unresponsive, between the brightly painted walls. To keep whatever demons his former step-sister couldn't force past her overly made up lips from pouncing, he supposed. He didn't care to analyze it any further.

"Waldorf." Not exactly the greeting reserved for a person he'd been acquainted with longer than any other current New York resident, save for the golden man who'd belatedly (re?) appointed himself as her squire, he knew, but he hadn't the time for false pleasantries. And her incessant screeching had divested him of any will he might have possessed to attempt them.

"Out."

The Blair Waldorf of pristine poise and brightly decorated accessories had faded; vibrant pastels and cherry reds replaced with the muddy purples and mustard yellows that splattered themselves in careless patterns against her ashen skin. Her eyes, once the deep, rich brown that haunted Chuck under the cover of night, and that had long since only been glimpsed by Charles from the glossy pages of thick magazines, were dull and glassy. Telltale sings that more than merely her own blood currently coursed through her veins, he knew. Codeine, or possibly Morphine, he thought. Perhaps even a combination of the two – or more, judging by the huddle of orange, plastic containers on the night stand to her right. Though who would have administered the narcotics when the penthouse remained almost eerily silent (had that sort of noiselessness unnerved Charles) and she was evidently unable to do so herself, he couldn't have hazarded a guess had he been so inclined.

Which he wasn't. The only reason for his interest being the murky fog not unlike the thick, grey cloud currently ambling slowly through the city that he knew from experience – personal as well as observed – to blacken one's memory.

The perks of being legally bound to a woman with habits such as his wife's, he supposed.

"Get. Out... Now."Though slowly, it was spoken clearly enough. And her memory appeared to be in working order, too; she'd remembered both Nathaniel's visit, during which he'd apparently informed her of Jack's death, as well as events that he could only assume had happened prior to the accident, since she'd mentioned that the accident itself had negated their relevance. Had the hands of time suddenly began to tick in reverse, perhaps he would have eventually been curious as to the 'Bass seed' she'd mentioned. But as it was it was irrelevant. Rendered so both by the accident that had claimed the elder Bass, and the disinterest of the younger, surviving Charles.

If his feet seemed to find their opportunity to carry him across the threshold then, Charles accredited Miss Waldorf's apparent exhaustion that had finally slowed the angry tirade of orders being launched in his direction.

"Lieutenant Archibald and his wife, along with Mr. Van der Woodsen, appear to be under the impression that you aren't responsible for my uncle's death." Quick. Precise. He hadn't any time for reintroductions. And he'd never been one for sugar or bushes, either. But the quick response that would have cut the meeting short didn't grace her thin, cracked lips. Instead, the non response that was her answer had his gaze searching her face for visible signs of an injury that would hamper her language comprehension.

There wasn't any. Though her right eyebrow was bisected by the criss crossing of a heavy thread, the neatly sewn x's extending into her hairline, and her nose appeared to have been broken in the impact.

"Can you understand me, Miss Waldorf?" It irked him slightly. The pleasantry her silence had forced him to employ; the wasted time and effort. His former-step brother would be meeting with his lovely bride in under forty five minutes. And while his younger, more volatile self had taken start times to be numbers that required the subtraction of at least two hours before they warranted his presence, the man that that boy had become, standing just inside the doorway of a room so bright it constricted his dark irises almost painfully, held promptness to the same standard he did preciseness.

"Archibald sent you." Raspy. More statement than question, and Chuck found himself taking a decisive step forward to reclaim the attention that had shifted to the blank wall to his left when her lips had stopped moving.

Her eyes slid deliberately to his. She didn't repeat herself, she hadn't any need; the embers slowly catching fire behind her dull pupils told him she knew he'd heard her. She was merely waiting, nostrils flared and jaw clenched, on his response. And had she been able to, he knew, her arms would have been crossed defiantly beneath her breast.

She'd switched tactics, he realized. The name she'd chosen to repeat from his explanation of his presence in her home deliberate. Meant to incite jealousy or rage or some other emotion that wouldn't have hesitated to flare up had the organ that had been her intended target still existed. But it didn't. Charles had long ago succeeded in amputating it.

Her eyes were still on him. The brief glint of shock he'd glimpsed as she'd recognized him had dissipated, and he could nearly feel the heat of her anger rolling off her in waves. If he evaluated the situation from her standpoint – oh perhaps viewpoint, considering she could no longer stand – then she had a right to be upset, he guessed. Chuck's abandonment, her parents' deaths, and most recently the accident that had claimed her self sufficiency a long with his uncle, who had apparently been more to her than just passing acquaintance. Though Charles didn't care to waste the time in analyzing Jack's precise role in her life. It was her precise role in his uncle's death that the gaggle of statuesque blondes were interested in, and that stood to benefit him. But anger was a wasted emotion, its presence never served to alter events already transpired; it wouldn't reanimate useless limbs or deceased parents, and in his experience it only served to hamper productivity. As it was doing so now.

"Indirectly." A convoluted answer when Charles was normally nothing if not precise. Though his answer wasn't entirely imprecise. It was merely misleading. Nathaniel hadn't sent him, he hadn't been sent by anyone to be exact. Though his former step-siblings – one of which was technically, and legally, an Archibald – had asked he make the trip. And Mrs. Archibald had implied that Mr. Archibald, the latter being the Archibald that Miss Waldorf was referencing, he knew, was of the same frame of mind as the former. Indirectly, Archibald had sent him. And he would allow her to labour under the false assumption if it facilitated the flow of information that would hasten his departure from New York. Another party, the one who he assumed had medicated and clothed her after her release yesterday morning, could inform her of the inaccuracies. If they felt so inclined. He would not be returning to do so himself. The first visit, as evidenced by her continued silence, was quickly becoming a waste of both time and effort. Regardless of whether or not Miss Waldorf possessed the information his former family members thought her to, a second visit would not be justified. Her unresponsiveness did not warrant further prodding. He'd posed the question. She hadn't answered. The end simply did not justify the means.

Clearing his throat pointedly, he slowly half arched an eyebrow. Brown eyes remained silently locked on brown, glaring daggers across the starkly painted room. The sliver of Chuck that remained; the minuscule fraction of thought and action and feeling that had once dominated his essence and that not even a restful night's sleep could snuff out entirely, recognized the arch of her bisected brow, the set of her jaw, and thin line that had become her cracked lips for what they were. Indicators of intense emotion. Hatred, to be exact. Laced with a fraction of spite, resentment, and hurt. All passionate. All determined. And Chuck would have wondered how a woman so full of piss and vinegar, so full emotion and energy and _life_, could have ever contemplated ending that life, had the soft humming of his cell phone against his thigh then not marked the end of the allotted hour and alerted Charles to Chuck's presence.

Charles engulfed Chuck once more, and with a curt nod the latter reluctantly followed the former as he retraced their steps, leaving Blair once more in the solitude that she'd been angling for since the last time he'd washed his hands of her and left her flat on her back in bed. The old proverb about prudent wishes threaten to whisper its sing song 'I told you so' in her ear, but she used the last shred of energy she hadn't depleted willing him from her presence to carve its tongue from its mouth before her eyelids stole all control form her and her dark lashes fell limply against her hollow cheeks.

* * *

A/N- This is a first. I have nothing else to say!

xoxo

Lynne


	9. Part 8

_**Disclaimer: **I own nothing.  
**A/N **- This is dark. Be warned. And a huge thank you as always to everyone taking the time out of their busy day to read and review. Hope all had good weekend.  
**Special thank you:** Ayr, Nes, Wifey. _

* * *

Precision. Promptness. Justifiable effort. These were all qualities and constructs that Charles appreciated. That he deemed important. That he valued. And that been undeniably scarce in his morning.

Meeting with Miss Waldorf so that she could impart upon him information pertinent in his uncle's death hadn't been as productive as he had been lead to believe. He hadn't entirely expected her to hand him a gold plated explanation of her involvement of the accident. He had stumbled upon enough information regarding her history over the years and was aware of his own history with the now nearly helpless brunette to fully appreciate and anticipate her reaction upon being met with him once more, but there had been something in the candor with which she spoke when she'd believed him to be his uncle that Charles had brushed off as unimportant, but that as the day wore on, becoming rife with inconveniences and requiring more and more of his energy and patience, that Chuck hadn't been willing to let go entirely.

Though Charles had ended the conversation with Miss Waldorf promptly when the alarm he'd set on his cellular device had indicated he should, it had apparently been the only appearance of the word he would witness for twelve four hours, it seemed. The limo driver hadn't been waiting curbside as he should have been, and when the man finally did make an appearance it was only to make a wrong turn and entangle the dark beast in a throng of spitting, honking monsters. There had apparently been a collision a few blocks ahead that had traffic snaking through Manhattan's clogged streets for miles. He'd been forced from his idling black chariot into the damp cloud that only seemed to thicken as he navigated his way through the chaos. And the heavy, grey blanket that just that morning had him drawing familiar inferences between London and New York had set his teeth on edge the longer it had prevented him from successfully arriving at his destination. It had taken, he knew, three times as long to make his way to the courthouse on foot than it should have. By which time the meeting between the authorities and the team of lawyers his former step-brother had arranged to represent his lovely bride had concluded. He'd then been unable to reach either the blonde not-quite-yet lawyer or the man's sandy haired brother-in-law. Neither had he been able to make contact with his driver, and thus had been forced to make the trek on foot to the sprawling Manhattan Archibald mansion after several unsuccessful attempts at hailing a cab.

The weighted drops of cold water that had begun to bat away the dull, blurry ocean of grey that hugged the city when he'd left the courthouse hung like thick curtains around him now. Pant legs clinging to his thighs, he made his way up the winding road that led to the Archibald's. The red scarf that had wrapped warm wool around his neck and had warded off the mid-December chill earlier that morning, now lay limply across his shoulders; its drenched material so heavy under the weight of the near torrential down poor that it virtually flowed like liquid. A dark, scarlet liquid.

"Chuck!" The fluid curtain before him was parted to reveal the lanky Lieutenant Archibald. And the way his name had leaped from the man's lips left Chuck with the distinct impression that the day was far from over. "We've been trying to reach you." And he was right. "There's been an accident." It seemed there had been many of those as of late, he mused. Or perhaps it was the amount of those afflicted by the accident that had ended Jack's life or its unwillingness to draw itself to a close that seemed to artificially inflate their frequency. It had been nearly two weeks since he'd been met with the very same sentence that Nathaniel offered him now, and the cause for its first proclamation hadn't yet receded before a second had apparently warranted it usage. But the first time it had been employed Chuck had merely nodded and begun preparations for his uncle's funeral. His death had come to pass. And death was irreversible. There hadn't been any point to lengthy periods of grief, or elaborate shows of unfelt emotions. Charles had been firmly behind the wheel, and what needed to have been done was done quickly and efficiently. But now, as blue eyes searched brown, an odd flutter just behind his navel sent the telltale flicker of something he hadn't glimpsed in himself since before Charles had firmly locked Chuck away bounce inside his empty chest. Anticipation.

And he didn't know how he knew what the man was about to say, but before the words tumbled in a hurried rush from his lips, he knew. "J.J.'s been hurt. Serena's taken him to the hospital. Alfred is bringing the car around now." Chuck felt more than enacted the slight nod of his head.

J.J. had been injured before. And he'd been in and out of the hospital more times than Chuck would have been able to recall; he required weekly rounds of dialysis, semi annual check ins with his medical doctors, and had contracted a fair amount of both viral and bacterial infections since his birth five and a half years prior. But it had never elicited this reaction from his father, he knew. The uncharacteristic sense of unease at being met with the news that his offspring had been injured unnerved him. Perhaps it was merely because he'd been present for all other incidents – or had at least been within shouting distance – and had been able to evaluate for himself the extent of the child's injuries or ailments. Alternatively, perhaps it was merely the element of the unknown that had the slight hitch in his gait as he crossed the winding drive way to meet the approaching limousine before it had a chance to reach the two men. But it was, regardless, undeniably a glimmer of Chuck escaping the prison that Charles had left unguarded in his preoccupation with the inconveniences and irritations that the day had held that turned toward Nate then. "Are you coming?"

In hindsight, the hesitant glance the blonde man had sent over his shoulder should have tipped Chuck off that not all was as it seemed, he supposed. As should have the route the sparse conversation took between the occupants of sleek beast's interior, he knew. But neither the glance nor the inquiries about Blair Waldorf had been able to lure Chuck's attention entirely from their destination. And it wasn't until he'd come face to face with his former step-sister and the unharmed child she held safely in her arms had he realized that he'd been masterfully manipulated.

"Don't blame Nate." The request her tone held was at odds with the demanding palm the golden haired woman help up to halt the progression he hadn't realized he'd been making towards her husband. And she was right. Blame could not be laid at anyone's feet until the reason for the manipulation had been revealed.

"Daddy, look!" His feet carried him over to his male child at the small boy's enthusiastic smile and emphatic pointing at the line that had been inserted into the back of his right palm. His amber eyes held the wonder that never failed to appear at the clear tubing that was attached to his body on a weekly basis. "Make me better!" He could only nod at J.J.'s explanation. Apologetic blue eyes met his over the boy's rusted brunette hair, and an strange sensation coughed and sputtered deep in his stomach until its embers slowly began to burn and cast a dim light through the dark pit.

Relief.

"He's fine, I'm sorry." And what surprised him more than the relief struggling through his veins was the hand that she linked with his as she so easily offered the heart felt apology. "Nate and Eric told me that you didn't make the meeting this morning. I was worried that you wouldn't make it back in time to take J.J. to his appointment in London. I hope that it's ok that I arranged from him to undergo his treatment here."Again he could only nod as his child babbled happily in his God mother's arms. He could only chalk it up to the fog and the rain and the traces of what he now realized were fear that prickled his wet flesh that he hadn't yet inquired about the need to manipulate him into allowing his offspring the medical attention. But the dark look that flashed in light eyes as they averted their gaze to the top of J.J.'s small head told him that his inability as of yet to pose the question hadn't left it altogether forgotten.

"There's something you need to see." Nathaniel's tone held not even the slightest hint of regret or remorse for having mislead Chuck into believing that harm had befallen his child, and Chuck knew without having to be told that J.J's treatment hadn't been the sole reason for his father's manipulation. But before he could untangle the fingers he'd forgotten held his Mrs. Archibald's – and that he hadn't noticed had curled slightly around the slender fingers – and follow the Lieutenant into the hallway, a small, youthful voice stopped him.

"Daddy, don't go." For the first time since the small child had made his entrance into the world, Chuck was more than slightly surprised to find himself hesitant to leave the boy. Slowly, Chuck lowered himself until he was eye to eye with the small child. But he was at an uncharacteristic loss for words, it seemed, and the child's God mother spoke instead.

"Daddy will only be a minute, J.J., he promises. He just needs to talk to uncle Nate for a minute." And he was surprised by the sincerity that her eyes held as she said the words. She didn't doubt that he would return promptly. Didn't challenge him to show affection for a child he hadn't been able to feel anything but obligation toward. Simply a genuine belief, or perhaps an assumption, that he would return as quickly as humanly possible to comfort his offspring.

It would have unnerved him further, he knew, had it not – oddly enough – succeeded in soothing him as well as the child in her lap. "Chuck," fingers finally untangled then, but at a pace that would have caused him to become impatient had it been not five hours ago, "don't blame Nate." The repetition had him furrowing his brow in curiosity. "Have dinner with us again tonight. Mom and Eric are coming over for Charlie's birthday." And it was the fact that she'd requested his presence at a meal that his being a guest in her home should have facilitated without the need of an invite that had anticipation slowly flickering to life again and his feet quickly following after his would have been brother-in-law.

"Here." The file was thrust into Chuck's hands without ceremony or further explanation. The olive branch that had been extended only twenty-four hours ago had obviously been revoked at some point during the day in Chuck's absence. And he suspected that it was due in part – if not entirely – to the younger of the two current Mrs. Basses. "Serena has always maintained that you didn't know. _Georgina_ -" the same distaste that the man's brother-in-law held for Miss Georgina Harriett Bass was apparent in Mr. Archibald's eyes - "appears to think otherwise." It was clear by the thin line the Lieutenant's lips had become and the sharp arch of his brow that his own lovely bride – and Chuck was unnerved to discover that the words lacked their usual disdain when in reference to his wife – had pleaded for him to offer the benefit of the small doubt he was currently.

"Hospital records." Dark brows rose higher than Charles had previously allowed until they were nearly indecipherable from the thick, dark locks that clung damply to Chuck's forehead.

Silence crawled on its belly between the two men.

"Yes." A one word explanation that confirmed more than it explained.

"Miss Waldorf's." And he felt an odd satisfaction at the clenching of the other man's fists that his proper reference elicited. He didn't care to analyze it, but had to exert a slight effort to suppress the urge to do so.

"Yes, and it's very much against the law that I'm even in possession of them." Yes, it would be. But it apparently hadn't stopped the Lieutenant from obtaining them. Though why he had remained unexplained. "Let alone letting you look at them. So hurry up." And his shifty demeanor and quickly moving eyes explained the need for manipulation, at least. The files apparently held information that could not be successfully removed (or secretly, it appeared) from the hospital.

"I am already aware of the condition she was in when the accident occurred," Chuck told the lanky blonde when the file revealed prenatal blood work and an obstetrical ultrasound. He failed to see exactly what about tests that had been run on the day of the accident would warrant his former step-sister having 'always maintained' anything. But the other man remained silent, only offering further guidance once his hard gaze had been met.

"Check the date on the ultrasound." The air hung heavy with undertones Chuck didn't quite grasp and flickers of feelings he hadn't had to decipher within himself since the last time he'd held something belonging to Blair Waldorf in his hands. "Now."Unapologetic. Curt. Brusque, even. "I don't have all day," the other man added when Chuck had yet to lure his eyes to the required page.

The ultrasound hadn't been performed at the same time as the blood work, it seemed. Instead, the top right hand corner of the result held another date.

One that had more in common with Chuck then it did with Charles.

"You didn't know." Perhaps it was the fog and the rain and length of the day, or the lack of precision and of timely effort management, or the exponential accumulation of it all that had the shock that reverberated in the blonde man's chest surging with full force through Chuck then. "Christ, you didn't know. Shit. Ted," Chuck heard more than saw the walkie at Nate's belt being unclipped and the static crack unnaturally loudly in the eerie silence between them, "hold her release. We have reason to charge her." The empathy in his tone and the pregnant pause burnt him. Charred his clothing as he dropped the file and backed away from the self appointed protector of who was apparently the maybe mother of his first born child. Seared his flesh as he barked out orders over the line to his former step-brother to obtain every medical document available on Miss Waldorf – domestic and abroad. It burnt him; the flames that lapped at him, singing his hair. Engulfing him in white heat until it was neither Chuck nor Charles, but emotion itself that had control.

* * *

_**A/N**_ – I wanted to send a special thank you to 'JD' who hit the nail on the head with a few issues I was having with the last part, and really helped me flesh them out for this part. I hope the style is more in keeping with previous parts. The last part should have been the opening scene for this part (this is getting confusing, I know), but I got a little lazy/frustrated and just decided to post is as a set up for the mood in this part, rather than advance the plot.

I also wanted to... I won't say 'apologize', because in all fairness I did give _fair_ and rather _repetitious_ warning that this would be dark. But to 'depressed', whom I've depressed enough to quite reading, I do have a point with this, yes. And I am getting to it. But I completely respect your decision to stop reading. (So... this was kinda pointless to tack on, yes? Lol.) It is dark. But it will end on a note that is fitting, and that I'm happy with.

Basically, thank you to you both for having the gusto to voice an opinion that may not always be received well, but that was honest and tactfully put.

And thank you to everyone whose reviews have encouraged me to continue. Much appreciated. I haven't the words to express how much. (Ironic, for those of you who know me.)

xoxo

Lynne


	10. Part 9

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing._

_**A/N -** This is dark. This chapter will not make you feel warm and fuzzy. It may test your upchuck reflex. You have been warned. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to leave their thoughts, they fuel me. I've been ill and injured, and thank those who've inquired about my health on my other stories. I'm feeling better, thank you. I will try to update more frequently._

_**Special thank you to**: Ayr, Nes, Wifey. You are all very dear to me. _

* * *

"Chuck!" The name was launched from Eric's tongue, Chuck knew, but by the time it leaped onto Chuck's bone drenched back, the heavy downpour had battered and pounded the moniker until all that remained was a faint whisper struggling against the storm's harsh winds. Drops that weren't quite rain, but had yet to fully solidify into hard bullets of hale slid between his shoulder blades, alternatively licking and biting into his flesh. He would have wondered idly how it was the crisp half liquid/half ice didn't rise off him in thick plumes of steam had his brain been able to corral his thoughts in a single direction.

He did not know where he was. He had lived in New York for nearly eighteen years and he could not recognize his surroundings.

He was lost.

Streets that had been easily discernible to him the last time he had visited the city that never slept crowded him now; any identifying details they might once have held, blurred around the edges and dodged his searching glare. The curtain of rain that had danced in circles around him as he'd made his way from the courthouse to the Archibald mansion only hours before, wrapping him in its cold, stubborn embrace, had thickened. Knitting the strands of translucent drops over and over until they loomed like a solid wall around him.

"Chuck! Stop! Wait!" And he barely registered the plea. He wasn't sure if it was the words themselves that coughed their frantic single syllables in his ears or if it was the vibrations they made as they came to their abrupt end against his impenetrable cocoon that had his shoes ending their erratic tattoo against the sidewalk. He didn't turn to face his once relation, the metal rod that had replaced his spine wouldn't allow it, but the other man's steady footsteps and constant calling had hounded him for blocks and he would not be dissuaded. "Thank you. If you would just..."

His voice sounded muffled to Chuck's ears; the characteristics of his face obscured by the wall of torrential rain. And even through the blur and haze engulfing him, Chuck could see the aspiring attorney summoning his lawyerly persona.

And for reasons unknown it irked him. He was not his father, who to be convinced of a ventures' potential viability had to be approached with care and nearly suffocated with information. Neither was he his despicable uncle, who only need first have hand experience with the female work force to consider pillaging and plundering its company. Chuck had always thought himself to be reasonable; he needn't be plied with an over abundance of information, distracted by anatomy, or persuaded by cagey tactics to give the blonde man his day in court. "Spit it out, Eric."

Eric paused. The large 'o' his lips formed told Chuck that he hadn't expected him to respond at all, let alone with the vigor that his name was spat. The blonde man's throat worked as he scrounged for his preplanned spiel, Chuck knew, but the words evaded him. Abandoned and speechless, the not-quite attorney merely thrust a beige envelope forward. It hung in the air between the two men as Chuck eyed it with disdain.

An envelope. Eric's explanation was a water logged, floppy envelope. A water logged, floppy, thick, legal-sized envelope.

"_It's not going to work, Jack." Chuck burst through his uncle's office in the grand castle he'd brought nephew and passing fancy to dry out while they waited for the private firm that Jack had hired to handle the paternity test to return their verdict. And while Chuck waited for his step-brother to have the result of his own private test sent over from the States. He didn't trust Jack as far as he could throw him. Not when either Bass could easily be on the hook for daddy duty. "Sneaking off to your lair to fake the results." _

_Surprise Chuck knew to be anything but genuine slithered across his uncle's face. _"_I just sent Garrett to find you, nephew of mine." He hadn't, Chuck knew; he'd seen the butler dusting candle sticks in the foyer on his way in, but he let the lie slide in favour of getting this over and done with as soon as possible. _

"_Just open it." Chuck's snarl would have been intimidating, had the noose he felt tightening around his neck not started to choke the air from his lungs at the sight of the legal sized envelope in his uncle's hands. Jack's made quick work of opening the results and when his eyes lifted victoriously to his nephew's, Chuck felt the air rush from his lungs and darkness begin to edge its way into his vision as the noose tightened further. _

"_Looks like daddy number two is the lucky winner. Sorry kid." The smirk stretching his lips thin across his white teeth and the glint in his eye told Chuck he was anything but. "Let's go find your baby mama and let her know."_

"_Hold on. Not quite just yet." Chuck managed to convince his lungs to work as the stray thought formed at the back of his brain, but Jack had already anticipated his protest and was reaching into his breast pocket as he rose from behind his desk._

"_It came for you this morning." The envelope Jack handed him was letter sized and white, but Chuck knew without having to open it that its contents would be no different from the beige manila envelope Jack still held in his other hand. And when he did pull the white letter with shaking hands from his uncle's steady ones, the black typing told him the same thing as Jack's snide remark had. Daddy number two was now the only daddy candidate that mattered. "Check with Bart's precious step-son if you feel the need," Jack's taunt had Chuck reaching for his cell phone and typing furiously, "but I think you'll find blood is just as thick as blondes." Eric's answering text filled the pause Jack meant to be dramatic. __**I'm so sorry, Chuck. **__He felt his uncle's satisfied smirk reach his eyes behind him. "Or at least in this case it is. Let's go boy, you've already knocked her up, let's not hold her up in hearing the news too." _

An envelop that no doubt counted amongst its contents a detailed account of a medical procedure six years past.

"_I'm going to marry her." Chuck's proclamation was badly slurred and would more than likely be forgotten by the time his blood was free of amber liquid and the white powder was wiped from his nose. His only living relative – unborn children you only just found out were yours didn't count; Chuck decided, not yet anyway – cocked an eyebrow at him and crossed his ankle over his knee in the large cabin of the Bass private plane. "Georgina." Chuck elaborated drunkenly though no elaboration was needed. "I'm going to marry the mother of my child and tell Bart just where he can stick his fucking precious company." The nearly __empty tumbler he held in his hand sloshed the dark liquid coursing through his veins onto __his pants unnoticed. "He wanted me to run Bass Industries? Well I wanted a father. Life sucks and then you die. I'm going to marry her and love my child like my father never loved me. I'm doing this my way, now. I'll give my son or daughter everything my father never gave me without the old Bastard's money." Glassy eyes met eyes shinning with victory. "You can have the company, Jack. I don't want it."_

"_And I'd be glad to take it off your hands, dear nephew," Chuck struggled to focus on what his uncle was saying, "but I think your father would have hated it more if you did both." Chuck's expression would have been one of confusion had his face not suddenly started to feel numb. "Marry Georgie and raise the brat with as much love and devotion as my brother never thought to give you. Once we scoop your bride out of the trouble she's landed herself in in Romania, we could be in Las Vegas in under six hours. But stay on at the company. It could be in name only, like a figure head," Jack added quickly when Chuck shook his head widely, causing the first wave of nausea he'd suffered since he was eight to violently turn his stomach . "You retain your inheritance and stay on the pay roll. Take the money the old bastard loved more than he loved you and use it to raise your kid in a castle meant for kings in the city known for proper etiquette. Love your kid; be faithful to your wife. And do it from inside the business your father neglected you for. The one that he couldn't be at the helm of_ _**and**_ _love his son. Put that last proverbially nail in his coffin." _

_Had Chuck been sober he would have recognized his uncle's speech for what it was; a manipulative ploy. Jack wanted Chuck as far away from New York – and from Lily and the other shareholders who would convince him to throw his uncle by the wayside – as possible, and submitting a counter offer to the Bass heir's proposal to outright gift the company to him was a brilliant tactic to keep suspicion from falling on Jack's own motives when it came to the company. But as it was, the perverse form of reverse psychology Jack subscribed to was overkill on top of the small pharmaceutical and liquor companies that were his nephew's blood stream, and Chuck agreed readily, unknowingly handing over the reigns to his life along with those of his father's company as their plane followed the sun's example and slipped from the sky. _

A life altering procedure.

A life ending procedure.

Emotions that had been racing through Chuck's veins and stuttering through the empty cavity in his chest boiled over. Thunder cracked around the two men. Lightening lit the sky. The heavens parted. And the wall of water surrounding Chuck, hugging his emotions, his feelings, his _rage_ to him like a swaddling blanket around a newborn infant disintegrated. Trees with leaves left almost too green from the heavy rain fall came into focus and Chuck realized he wasn't lost after all, but was standing, chest heaving and jaw clenched, half way up the drive of the Archibald mansion.

How he'd gotten there, he did not know. The image of Nathaniel's slack jaw and shocked eyes as realization dawned in the hospital corridor that Chuck hadn't known about the child, about the baby, was imprinted against Chuck's corneas; the sound of slick cement beneath his shoes still echoed in his ears, but his eyes hadn't registered the journey. His feet, fueled by unfamiliar emotions and feelings and _rage_, had usurped his brain – his _logic –_ and he'd somehow ended up at the Archibald's with the youngest Van der Woodsen in toe.

No, Chuck realized, he'd called upon Eric's services. Uncover all of Miss Waldorf's medical history, he'd demanded. Hands shaking with an unresolved anger that vibrated his bones, Chuck tore the envelope from the other man's hands. Paved gravel bit into the souls of his newly purchased and expensive leather shoes, but didn't slow Chuck's pace as his legs hungrily ate the distance to the mansion's main entrance.

Chuck needed to find dry land, to organize his thoughts. To confirm what he suspected. The room he practically shared with his offspring came into view as he rounded the dark corridor and he charged through its doorway, seeking respite from himself; from Chuck.

"Charles." And he would find it in his bride, he realized. There had yet to be a time since those few months after her son's birth that Charles had relinquished the wheel and allowed Chuck to step into the limelight. The heavy wooden door connected with its frame loudly, and Charles twisted to face his maker. He did not inquire about her presence in his bed chamber, though he had believed her to be a ward of the prison still. Nor he did demand an explanation for the lie she'd cunningly weaved for Nathaniel. It did not matter. Charles did not care. And Chuck needed Charles to knot his tie and herd his thoughts until he could soundly weigh the facts of the situation.

Blood pounding relentlessly against his ear drums, Chuck wildly flung the paper clenched in his hand without averting his glare from the endless pit that was hers. Her beady green eyes did not follow the limp thing as it landed on the pristine bed spread. And neither did she; her bony back met the far wall, Chuck's fingers wrapped around her neck.

"Selfish whore," he hissed with unrestrained venom. She did not flinch. Chuck had called her worse, he knew, and the smirk her thin, cracked lips stretched across her hollow face told him it was a fact she too knew well. Tightening his hold around her windpipe, he heard control crack its leather whip somewhere off in the distance. And he nearly groaned in tortured relief when his crushing lips strangled hers, the bite he gave her that was everything but loving drawing blood.

She didn't respond. Did not squirm for air; her bonny fingers remained placid against her skinny thighs. Neither did she sink her teeth into his flesh like she had the last night they'd been this close in proximity. He'd been inebriated then, that much he could map out, though how he'd come to be in such a state when only wine enough to wet his pallet had passed his lips, he hadn't cared to waste time contemplating. The events had come to pass, the child that ripened beneath her concave abdomen conceived.

And the events would come to pass now.

His fingers unapologetically bruised the nearly nonexistent flesh at her inner thighs, searching under the too short and too tight skirt for the undergarments he knew to be absent nearly before his fingers hit her coarse curls. With a self satisfied grunt her skeletal legs clamped themselves around his now naked hips, jerking him closer until his girth ripped her insides.

It wasn't hurried or frenzied. Lips did not meet in open mouth embraces. Fingers prodded, their onslaught void of caressing touches. There wasn't any passion; no fire, no flames. And when the end of the dance neared, Chuck threw his head back and roared. Primal. Guttural. A release. His release.

The final release of Charles.

And it was then, before the tension that cracked in the air could ignite, burning wildly until it ate up the room's oxygen that Chuck managed to pry the last of Charles' cold, dead fingers from the steering wheel.

His bride's embrace may hold Charles, Chuck knew, but it need not be Charles who embraced his bride any longer.

_The final release of Charles … _

"Get out, whore."

_The beginning of Chuck's reign. _

"Chuck." Lieutenant Archibald, Chuck realized, his pants securely slung around his narrow hips once more. But it was not a question, though the blonde lawman had clearly interrupted a scene that did not normally play out in his guest bedroom. It was merely his name. And it told Chuck that perhaps the olive branch bridge they'd constructed just yesterday, and that had been engulfed in flames only that morning had not yet been charred past the point of salvation.

Lips still catching traces of her metallic, red blood, Chuck nodded at the Lieutenant. "Take her," he growled, "I'm done with her." With a commanding nod to a uniformed officer that Chuck had not initially spied, Nathaniel crossed the threshold. Turning his back on the current Mrs. Charles Bass, Chuck faced the mattress, but before he could scoop its damp contents into his hand, the Lieutenant had crossed the room and done so himself.

"I'll take you to her," he said. And the arch of his brow and the set of his jaw needn't have been accompanied by the papers in the other man's hands for Chuck to know just which _her_ was being referenced.

"Yes, you do that." The bridge burnt on. "Take me to Blair."

* * *

A/N - I know. It makes me want to cringe, too. But look at it from a purely plot driven stand point. Georgina aided in creating Charles, and now she's aided in his demise. If their little tryst hadn't happened, Chuck would still be under Charles' thumb when he confronted Blair. I will say no more. :)

Oh, and no, B, we don't know if J accosted Blair, or what the 'New Years' reference was all about. This is just something that had been in my head *before* Jack ever appeared.

Lynne


	11. Part 10

_**Disclaimer:** I won nothing._

_**A/N -** I must apologize for the delay. Part 11 is already 2/3 written and may just be up this evening. I will try to post before GG this evening. (I get the new episode this evening because God not only rewards slackers, it seems, but Canadians as well.) I can not tell you how much your feedback means to me. It is always appreciated more than you know._

_Thank you: Ayr, Nes, Wifey (and special thank you for the beta, love.)  
Dedication: You know who you are._

* * *

The rain had slowed to a sporadic drizzle outside the limo. Clouds that had engulfed the city in their dreary embrace had faded; their now off-white shade filtered the late afternoon sunlight so that it toyed with Nathaniel's golden locks, but left his eyes shadowed behind a thin stream of muted gray.

Though the shadow across the blonde man's face hadn't obscured his foul disposition. If anything, his spine had only straightened, his jawline hardened.

"Left here, Conrad," he ordered.

Chuck crossed his ankle over his knee. Nathaniel's directive was short, and barked with more venom than he'd ever heard the Lieutenant employ.

Hypothetically, he could understand his point of view; he'd left Blair to fend for herself after his father's death, left her to deal with the … pregnancy alone. A pregnancy that Nathaniel – for some unimaginable reason – had thought he'd need not be in the loop of.

A pregnancy he hadn't bothered to mention to Chuck.

Not even in passing.

"_Nate, I can't." _

"_I can't handle Serena and the pregnancy and keep Blair from hurting herself. Come home, Chuck."_

"_I can't." _

"_Why the hell not?!"_

"_I just..."Because this would destroy her, __**he **__would destroy her. "…Can't." _

"_She'll forgive you, you know. For leaving. For whatever else you've done. She always does." And she would, in time, he did know. And he would eventually destroy her for it. "Just come home. She needs you." An awkward pause crackled across the line between past and present. "She loves you." _

_His pause was nearly palpable. _

"_Whatever." Self righteousness. Anger. Both warranted. "If you change your mind she's in room 213."_

_He knew the room. He'd secretly paid through the nose to ensure its privacy. "Nate?"_

"…_What?"_

"_I'm not going to change my mind." _

_There was nothing that would change it, nothing left that could. _

"_Don't bother calling again unless you do." _

Not once.

"When did you find out?"

Eyes hidden behind the sun's cape, Nathaniel responded coolly; "We found right after you left."

Something about the way his shoulder shrugged flippantly told Chuck he did not mean him as his lovely wife, Chuck's former sister, by 'we.' No, his caressing tone was clearly meant to indicate another, more petite, fiery, New York woman.

One who had, at one point, carried his child, who may or may not have given birth to his child.

He hadn't been able to bring his shaky fingers to open the damp envelope. Not yet, not without first looking into the eyes of the woman whose spell, if he was being honest – and since it was Chuck and not Charles whose breath came in angry puffs, he was free to do so – he had never truly escaped.

The woman who he'd left behind in the ruins of his former self, the woman who'd shared his bed, his _life_... who he'd _created_ life with...

The woman who may or may not have born him an heir, the woman who'd become the shriveled, enraged, bitter bitch who lay nearly lifeless in her penthouse suite, the woman who, having been with child not one week ago, was newly barren.

Question was, Chuck thought as he took in Nathaniel's stiff, protective stance, was the premature void in her womb a first?

The options were clutched in his hand, he knew. Abortion, adoption... miscarriage.

Which had she chosen ? Had life chose for her?

Did it even matter?

"Did no one think to tell me?"A passing street lamp illuminated cool, blue eyes momentarily as they flitted over Chuck's features, measuring. "The ..._father_?"

The word from his own mouth, in reference to a child that may or may not even have come into existence, may or may not have survived it's mother's wrath, the wrath that Chuck himself incited, had anger morphing into rage. His diaphragm tightened, twisted with it, his mind raced rapidly over all the facts that Chuck had gleaned through the foggy haze that had surrounded him during Charles' reign. His fingers itched to find their truth, curled into his palm until his nails left angry, half moons in the flesh there.

Light eyes turned cold. "Would it have mattered?" More than Nathaniel knew. More than even he himself had ever though possible. "You'd made your decision."

No, it had been made for him.

By Georgina.

_A miniature version of what had once been his father's private jet, and that now boasted Jack's arrogant flair for mixed fabrics, burst into vibrant flames on Chuck's television screen. The metallic bird's tail, crumbled like paper in the fist of an angry and frustrated writer, separated from the rest of the molten plane and disintegrated over the gleaming black ocean. _

_Eleanor and Cyrus had been on that plane, Chuck knew, though it would have been better for the endless pit that was now his stomach had he not._

"_Blair..." She hadn't been on the plane, that much he'd already been all too aware of. No, she'd been but 213 miles from him, from his wife and unborn child, he added, for the better part of a week. Information that had him falling to his knees, tears filled with relief threatening to fall, at the mere thought of Paris' annual fashion week. And that fueled his descent down the castle's secondary stair case, and his fingers against his cell phone's keypad, before he'd heard his new bride's insistent calling. _

_She'd begun to bleed._

_And it was then, coat shrugged into haphazardly and blackberry casting a faint light in the dimly lit stairwell, that the reality of his decisions had crashed into him with the force of a thousand hurricanes._

_His wife and child._

_Or Blair Waldorf. _

By Jack.

"_Chuck!" He felt his uncle's grip tighten around his elbow before he could ascend the first metal step towards the looming plane. "What are you doing? I said Georgie's pregnant!"_

_Forcefully, Chuck threw off his uncle's tight grip. "Good for her. I'm going home. Blair-"_

"_Isn't important anymore. You've made your bed, and now you have to lie in it." _

"_The kid's probably not even mine and I wouldn't want it even it was!"_

_Slowly, Jack flicked ice blue eyes the length of his nephew. "That's what your father said about you." _

_~*~_

"_You can have the company, Jack. I don't want it. I'm going to marry her. I'm going to marry Georgina."_

"_I'd be glad to take it off your hands, dear nephew," Chuck struggled to focus on what his uncle was saying, "but I think your father would have hated it more if you did both. Marry Georgie and raise the brat with as much love and devotion as my brother never thought to give you. But stay on at the company. You retain your inheritance and stay on the pay roll. Take the money the old bastard loved more than he loved you and use it to raise your kid in a castle meant for kings in the city known for proper etiquette. Love your kid; be faithful to your wife. And do it from inside the business your father neglected you for. The one that he couldn't be at the helm of_ _**and**_ _love his son. Put that last proverbially nail in his coffin."_

_  
_.. by Nathaniel himself.

"It would have mattered," he muttered, teeth clenched, regret and rage mating deep with him. "It would have fucking mattered," he repeated under his breath, his mood matching the limo's black tint as it began to idle once more before the looming grey building, though the reduced volume did nothing to dampen his flame kissed rage.

~*~*~

It was clear to Chuck that the doorman, in all his dark and bland glory, had been expecting him. The elderly man's pudgy little face had lit up with something Chuck couldn't be bothered to put his finger on – like the first visit he'd made to the badly decorated elevator that day, his only concern was what lay motionless on the top floor. But unlike his first visit, it wasn't the the effort that deciphering the man's look would require that dissuaded him from doing so, it was the fire in his veins, the ice in his stomach, and the slow, maddening echo of his heart in his ears that wouldn't allow his brain to focus on anything but her, anything but Blair.

"I had a feeling you might be back."

Chuck didn't turn to take in the pudgy bellhop, though his ears vaguely registered the man's tone; light and conversational, as though they'd been acquaintances for years.

It was Nathaniel who answered the man's question. "Yes."

But the way an awkward tension descended upon them then, with its thick, suffocating, silence, Chuck knew the casual statement to have been directed toward him and not Nathaniel.

Nathaniel, who Chuck already knew to have visited Blair sometime after her release.

Nathaniel, who had shared Blair's life for a decade before she'd succumbed to inebriation at a speak-easy and surrendered her virtue to him, the self-absorbed ass. Ironic, Chuck thought as the elevator doors slid open to reveal Mrs. Archibald, that Nathaniel had usurped his former title.

The thought didn't sit well with Chuck. For reasons that galloped freely through his body, but that his mind refused to acknowledge, could not acknowledge.

After years of darkened solitude, Chuck was finally free to see the light, to breath fresh air, but like stroke victim learning to talk again, to feed himself again, he hadn't the slightest idea where to start seeing or breathing.

It was all an overload for him. The anger was recognizable, the molten magma of it was unmistakable and easily justified. It was the other ...feelings, the other sensations, the other _emotions_, that were battling for supremacy within him that had him before his step-sister and reaching out to his son without him registering it.

"Chuck." She settled his child in his arms as she spoke, and again Chuck was struck by Serena's openness. She'd obviously been through enough in her life by the time that Chuck had left New York, let alone after his abrupt departure, that she should be jaded, guarded, closed off. But she wasn't. In fact, with her blue eyes warm and fingers gentle as the combed back J.J.'s hair from his eyes, she was anything but.

"Daddy!" J.J nestled his head against Chuck's shoulder as he held out his palm. It was covered in bright, shiny stickers. "Look!"

It was an odd bunch of mangled feelings that tripped down his spine, tumbled through his belly as he held J.J in his arms. "I see that... so- J.J.."

He didn't know what to call him, he realized. His heir, his child, ...his son. And it wasn't just the sudden ebb of his anger at his son's touch that had him confused. It was his own behaviour.

No, Charles' behaviour, he corrected. Charles' behaviour that had him at a loss for words where his own child was concerned.

J.J babbled to himself incoherently as he stroked his sticker clad palm down his father's face and Chuck shifted his weight uncomfortably.

He'd held the boy before, yes. After his birth as he screamed bloody murder, when he'd fallen ill in Rome, on the few occasions that he had crawled into his lap as Chuck and the woman that he had chain himself to in marriage to had brought the boy to his weekly treatments. But the arms that had supported his son's slight weight then had been guided by Charles, always controlled by with rapt precision.

It was an odd feeling to finally be able to embrace his son, not just hold him.

"Serena, thank you." For thinking to bring J.J. over to the penthouse when all Chuck could do was see red, for insisting that he and J.J stay with them. For looking out for Blair. For looking out for him. For seeing him. "Thank you."

"Your welcome." She'd started at first when he'd said it, when those two words had passed his lips, but she offered him a smile with her response now. "You're family."

And he was, he realized with a jolt. Family. Serena, the sister he'd secretly wanted when he'd been five, the sister he'd finally received only to lose her again at seventeen, Eric, the little brother who he'd pined after behind closed doors, wishing for a miniature version of himself to impart upon his knowledge about women, sex and good scotch. Even Lily, the mother figure, had been something the five year old version of himself had at one point or another asked Santa Clause for.

They were all family, had all _been_ family. Serena, his sister, who stood with her hand against his son's forehead, Serena who offered him a genuine smile. Eric, his brother, who'd moved heaven and earth to get him Blair's medical history in record time.

_In record time..._

A frantic beeping split the calm, comfortable silence between siblings then, matching the rapid pounding in Chuck's ears, and the blonde Lieutenant stepped forward to inform his wife that he was leaving with an awkward peck on her cheek. But Chuck didn't see his sister's spine stiffen, didn't see the man who'd married her flash him a dangerous look before disappearing into the bowels of the building, barely even felt her competent hands lifting his giggling boy from his arms.

_In record time..._

All he saw was Eric chasing after him in the rain, blonde hair turned five shades darker and plastered to his brow, all he heard was Eric's insistent shouts pouncing on him nearly before he'd exited the hospital. Eric, with the envelope his brother now clutched in his hands shielded from the torrential down poor under his suit jacket.

Eric, who hadn't been gifted nearly enough time to scavenge and gather. Eric, who'd possessed the information with such speed that Chuck wondered now if it was at all possible for him to have done so _after_ he'd received his demanding phone call.

Eric, who'd known about Blair, her condition, and obviously, its outcome. Eric, who, it was crystal clear to Chuck now, had known about Jack. _Blair _and _Jack._

Clutching the dampened envelope and the letter that it held, that held his sanity, contained his rage by fragile a thread, Chuck slowly and deliberately turned toward the parlor that lay behind him.

He would get his answers, but not from a soggy piece of paper that his scheming step-brother had placed in his hands. No, from the source, directly from the source.

Directly from one Miss Blair Cornelia Waldorf.

Chuck deserved that much, and that much, he assured himself, he would get.

* * *

A/N - As you can tell, the Chuck/Blair encounter is coming up next. I won't deprive you of it for too long, I promise. I am attempting to slog through 11 currently. :) And for those of you interested, TTE should be up soon as well, and *drum roll please* I have started the next installment of Mahogany!

Lynne


	12. Part 11

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. They are not mine. I also take no responsibility if this makes you want to throat tomatoes at me.  
**  
A/N:** I apologize, this had been slated to be ready for Sunday night. I was distracted by the last two minutes of GG. But I'm all talked out about it now, exhausted. Thank you to those who were kind enough to leave me their thoughts. Much love and appreciation.  
Special thank yous: Ayr, Nes, Wifey and Lady S. _

* * *

He was back. She could feel it in her bones. Ironic, she knew, since she couldn't feel her own angry tears once they'd trickled past her throat onto her collar bone.

She hated him for it.

Hated him for the tilt of his head earlier as he studied her like she were an item on a list he need merely to check off. Hated him for his calm, detached composure. Hated him for the dead look in his eyes, the calculated curve of his lips.

She hated him, _hated him. _

But most of all, more than the stick he had shoved up his incredibly tight sphincter, the one that was so far up there she was sure it should have made it impossible for him to turn his head, and the hard, unyielding set of his jaw, she despised him for making her hate him, for making her feel anything at all.

She didn't wan to feel. She wanted to drift aimlessly amiss on a cloud of endless narcotics. She wanted to be numb, immune to the rage and the self pity and the guilt festering inside of her; warring between themselves, promising to swallow her whole only to fade slowly, blurring like the stark, white walls around her that grew murky under the onslaught of unwanted tears. She wanted to drift into sleep, only waking once it was all over.

She didn't want to _feel. _Especially where he was concerned. He'd ruined her once, when she'd been seventeen and naive, he wasn't going to do it again now. She wasn't the doe-eyed child of years past. No, she'd long ago watched that version of herself sink into the quick sand that had become her life. The quick sand that he'd engineered; that she'd let him, with his quick smirk and dancing eyes, engineer.

She had wanted to feel that night, the one that stood as a gapping hole in her memory. She'd finally acquiesced to Jack's incessant, insistent demand, finally, in a moment of utter weakness, she realized now, taken a good, long took at what had become Blair Waldorf.

And maybe it had been the Merlot, or the lighting in the Palace Hotel's upscale bar, or maybe it was even the bar itself, but for the first time in more years than she could remember, she hadn't liked what she'd seen. So her answer had been yes.

_Again._

The first had been the anniversary of the day that she preferred to forget all together. The day that was meaningless, that wasn't tagged for celebration; that didn't mark another year's passing, wasn't another wax candle stuck into the gaudy icing of some too-sweet pastry. The day that, if you spent your life looking back on the past, on what could have been, some would mark as the end of Blair as they'd known her. Serena, she knew, had probably had tried to contact her, to offer her condolences on the loss as well as the others that she'd suffered all those years ago, or to make badly fashioned and barely masked inquiries after her 'mental health', but she'd decided the day was as good as any to take up drinking copious amounts of scotch, and had been content to watch her world tilt on its axis for hours on end.

Had been content, that is, until Jack had appeared.

"_And here I thought you cold and callus. I'm disappointed, Blair." _

_She hadn't been certain if he were merely a figment of her drunken imagination – and it was her imagination that was inebriated, not **her**, never her – until he'd spoken. _

_At least, she was nearly certain that he had spoken. The thin lines he called lips had moved, she was sure, but the sound was distorted and didn't match the movements, like a voice over on the Japanese movies that were sometimes on television late at night. _

"_Get out, Jack." She needn't bother with anything but those three words. She'd given him more before, paragraphs telling him no, painting colourful pictures of what she would rather do than step within five feet of him, and in every language she knew, but the effort was always wasted on him, he always came back, always with the same question in the sneer of his lips, the cock of his head, the glint in his eye. She needn't bother wasting her breath on him, he knew the dance, knew her answer before he would even ask, and he'd been asking since the other jackass who shared his surname had disappeared without so much as a word nearly six years ago. _

_The answer was always no. _

"_Tsk, tsk, tsk. So high and mighty, aren't we, doll?" He'd learned a few tricks since the last time she'd run him out of her suite. But if he thought slipping his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels was going to coax her into bed with him, he was sorely mistaken. "You know," no, she didn't, and she didn't want to know, "the thing I always liked about you," the thing that made him want to fuck her, he meant, "was that you were always such a firecracker under that cool exterior." _

Cool exterior... the fire below...

_He'd learned a few things, indeed. Bastard._

_She knew he was still in contact with his nephew. On the rare times that she bothered to listen to the whiny messages that Serena left with persistence on her answering service, regardless of how many times she changed her number – must be nice to have a big, bad police Lieutenant who'll disregard the law for you as your husband, she'd hear the blonde drop thinly veiled references to both Bass men. _

_But knowing something and being faced with it when your eyeteeth were floating in scotch were two very, very different things, apparently._

"_OUT!" And the snarl he called a smile was back on his lips again. Telling her that he knew damn well that the arrow he'd launched had hit home. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd somehow managed to manipulate her into stopping off at the liquor store last night, somehow managed to make her purchase the bottle of scotch that sat empty of her coffee table now. _

"_So high and mighty indeed, Blair. Sitting here in you penthouse suite, looking down on the rest of the city, down on the peons, thinking to yourself how utterly devoid of class and __talent and substance everyone else is. When the truth is that you're the classless, talentless, shriveled old bitch." She'd hit a nerve too, it seemed. __**Good.**__ "It's no surprise he left you, doesn't shock me in the least that he chose Georgina over you. Chose their child over yours." The sneer that twisted his features was calculated, dangerous, but her mind hadn't been able to leap over the hurdle he'd placed in its way. _

"_Don't you dare –"_

"_Dare __**what**__, Princess?" She'd been royalty all her life; Daddy's little princess, Queen of Constance, and not once did the term incite such disgust within her as it did now. "Bring up the past?" He stepped forward, arrogance permeating the room. "Or bring up __**him**__?" His hands weren't on her; his palms weren't spanning her small waist, his thumbs weren't tracing circles against her flat stomach, but she recoiled from his touch just the same. "I guess that means you don't want to hear about the happy couple?"_

_It went without saying – and it did for the most part, since those she hadn't severed from her social circle, and thus her life, had never heard of Chuck, let alone could mention him – that she didn't. _

_A fact he well knew. "Or their impending second addition?" And used. _

It was all that she remembered from the late September day. All that she cared to remember, really, because if she allowed the memory to flow as freely now as the scotch had that then, she'd be forced to relive it, forced to feel it.

Forced to feel his rigid hands ripping her night gown from her, the delicate silk shredding against the unsightly calluses on his hands. Forced to feel his teeth tearing into the plump flesh of her lips, his fingers bitting into her hips. The flood of blood between her thighs as he'd finally bent her over the polished wood of her coffee table without second thought or _care_ for her comfort and invaded her most intimate of places. A place that had only ever known tenderness, only ever known the slow, sweet caress of the boy that, against all rhyme or reason, she was tethered to, tied to; only ever known the tentative, inexperienced embrace of the boy who was his best friend, the boy who had once been her walking personification of perfection.

She didn't want to remember, didn't want to feel.

She just wanted to sleep, let the darkness take her, swallow her whole, only spitting her out once it was all over.

Chuck hadn't been able to force his stubborn limbs across the foyer. He wasn't short on will; the passion fueled by the flames of rage surged through him, lit his eyes with fire, drew his breaths from his heaving chest in weighted, audible pants.

No, for the first time since Lily, swathed in flowing white, had taken his hand in hers and whispered tearfully of his father's death he felt icy fingers trail their slow, deliberate path down his spine. And he realized with a jolt that the frigid kiss, the one that had pilfered his breath then from his tuxedo-clad seventeen year-old self as it was doing now, belonged to none other than fear itself.

Fear of the unknown that he held in his hand and had yet to bring his shaky fingers to open, apprehension for what lay just beyond the foyer, anxiety for what he would find there.

He'd been in this very spot not twelve hours ago; stood with his unmarred, expensive Italian shoes on this very tile, their shiny black leather a stark contrast against the white marble. He'd taken in the post-modern sculptures, the harsh lines of black metal against brisk off-white walls, but he hadn't he hadn't really seen them. Hadn't really _seen_ period.

Her walls were nearly grey, and without the slightest hint of colour, yes, but also completely bare. Devoid of any clutter what so ever – no paintings, no mirrors, not even a time piece. But what struck him the most, what slowed the blood in his veins, nearly stopping its flow altogether, was the absolute lack of personal affects. No knick knacks, no vases that would have belonged to her mother, nor the hydrangeas he would expect to fill them. And most of all, there wasn't a single photograph that he could see. Not one. Her mother's unsmiling face did not grace her daughter's home, nor did her father's smiling one, not even Dorota had been bestowed with the honour. At some point since he'd last been in New York, she'd cut her rich, luxurious suite down to the bare minimum – past the bare minimum.

It left him wondering just what else she had partitioned from her surroundings, removed from her life, removed from _herself._

"You are no more welcome in this home now anymore then you were this morning."

Her voice, made husky from overuse as she'd screamed at him earlier no doubt, had the opposite affect on him than that which he had been expecting. Instead of startling him, instead of adding further fuel to the bond fire of his rage, it soothed him. Nerves settled, he found that his legs ate the distance to her door easily, nearly confidently. Perhaps it was the the fact that she'd spoken more than two words this this time, maybe it was due to the dangerously calm tone she wielded. Either way, he wasn't supposed to be calmed by her presence. No, the sight of her once porcelain skin marred by angry purple blotches should have provoked him, enraged him. The fact that she lay there, a broken and battered invalid amongst what was supposed to be the serene perfection of her bright, white space, should have had the mercury rising. He should be upset, he thought as his feet once again stilled before the threshold, and as her dull brown eyes met his, he realized that he was. But it wasn't anger that was the cause of it.

"Jesus Christ, Blair," he whispered under his breath. The bruises she sported along the ridge of her brow, the bridge of her nose, down her jawline, and along what he could see of her collar bone had not deepened, the blood that still caked the neat line of x's bisecting her eyebrow hadn't darkened, nor had any more bruises or scarlet liquid appeared; in all respects, she was exactly as he'd seen her twelve hours ago. But he'd been seeing her through Charles' eyes, and Charles hadn't cared.

Chuck, he found, did.

He reminded her of a brilliant sculpture that her father had once admired from beside her within the hallowed halls of the Louvre one summer. Not that the resemblance mattered, it hadn't changed her mind, hadn't made her suddenly want him to rush to her bedside and shower her with piteous kisses or words of comfort, hadn't made her hatred for him any less. In fact, the sharp, slicing fire that had ripped through her head when he'd stepped into view, reminding her that her pain medication was long past due for a top up, was the only thing keeping her from screaming herself hoarse at his offending presence.

"B..." He didn't recognize the timbre of his own voice, or register the single syllable that he'd spoken. All that filled his vision was her face. Thoughts of everything else, of dead scum-bag uncles and still-damp envelopes – of even J.J, whose warmth against his chest he found himself to already be missing, drained from his mind, leaving only the horrific accident that had crippled her.

"No." Harsh and fast and hard, it was spat from behind clenched teeth when she saw his features soften, heard the nickname that she hadn't heard in years fall from his stunned lips. She didn't want his pity, didn't him want feeling anything at all where she was concerned. She had half a mind to run – fucking turns of phrase and their God damn figurative meanings – him out of her suite and wait for the pain to knock her unconscious again.

"Blair..."

"No!" Maybe she would scream herself hoarse; it didn't have to be the pain that had to knock her out, exhaustion would do just as well. "Get out! Leave me the Hell alone! Leave!"

Chuck wasn't sure why, but the screams that Charles had found unbearable and screechy, he found oddly comforting. She was still in there somewhere, the girl he'd fallen for at sixteen, the girl he'd loved at seventeen, the girl he'd made life with at...

He should be anything but sympathetic toward her, Chuck realized with a jolt. Georgina had stolen J.J.'s life from him with her drugs and alcohol, but Chuck had still had the chance to be a part of that life. For all her faults, and there were more than he would be able to list in ten lifetimes, she had never hidden the pregnancy from him; she hadn't stolen his son from him – he'd known from the beginning that she was knocked up, she's never tried to hide it.

Blair hadn't given him that same courtesy.

...But he hadn't exactly treated her with courtesy and respect, either. Sneaking off in the middle of the night and leaving her a three line 'apology', especially after he'd come to her, cried on her shoulder and made love with her under the moonlight, certainly could not be counted as courteous.

But he'd been a child! His father had just died!

...But she'd been a child, too, his long buried conscious whispered back. She had been a child, too. Alone, scared, abandoned. He'd left her. Why did he expect her to reach out to the person who'd walked away from her so easily_, again,_ to make herself vulnerable to that kind of hurt?

Because he would have wanted her too, he realized, stunned. He would have wanted her to come running to him the second she found out she'd conceived his child. He would have wanted to see her face when the realization hit that they were going to be parents, would have wanted to see the tears gather and stream happily down her cheeks. He would have wanted, it hit him then, to have shed a few tears of joy with her. Because he knew he would have. He knew that it wouldn't have been the gut wrenching, suffocating feeling that had come over him as he'd stood on the steps of the Bass plane, listening to Jack prattle on about Georgina and her spawn. He would have been happy – scared, yes, it would have been only natural under the circumstances, but he would have been _happy. _

And here he was now, married to Whoregina Sparks, and somehow living under the thumb of his dead uncle, the uncle who he'd handed over everything to, whose child he could admit now that he secretly believed his _lovely_ wife to be currently carrying, his seed...

_The Bass seed..._Isn't that what Blair had said when she had thought him to be his uncle? Earlier that same day, as he'd made his way into this very room, had she not...

He could see the words dance before him as though they were scrawled across the air itself.

"_It's gone now anyway...the accident took care of that... the Bass seed..." _

The Bass seed what? Was gone now? Yes, he though, his mouth dry, his breath refusing to come, so she'd said.

...But why refer to it as the 'Bass' seed? Why not _his_ seed – why not _Jack's?_ Hell, she'd thought that he was Jack, even _'your' _seed made sense to Chuck.

So why the _Bass_ seed? And the Bass seed _what?, _dammit!

And even before he stepped into the room, his spine straight, his hands steady despite the rage boiling inside him, before he crossed to her bedside and glared down at her, he knew 'what'.

The Bass seed couldn't commit to a Waldorf, the Bass seed didn't seem to like taking root in a Waldorf, the Bass seed didn't like her womb.

And he knew 'why'.

Because her flair for wounding others where it would hurt them the most would have guided her sword, and for Jack that would have been his ego, his virility, his name, but above all else, it would have been the being included in the same category as his nephew that would have brought the dagger home.

Because Jack's seed, Jack's _child_ had been lost, and so, Chuck knew now, straight from her lips as he had wanted, had his.

* * *

A/N - I normally detest 'spoiling' people re: my fics. But I feel that I have to tell you that this isn't always going to be bang-your-head-against-the-wall agnst and tears. It *will* get better. I promise. Sooner rather than later. Thanks for haning in

XOXO

Lynne


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